BV 660 .S5 Slattery, Charles Lewis, 1867-1930. The ministry VOCATIONAL SERIES THE MINISTRY VOCATIONAL SERIES THB TEACHER By Francis B. Pearson THE ENGINEER By John Hays Hammond THE NEWSPAPERMAN By Talcott WUliams THE MINISTRY By Charles Lewis Slattery CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS VOCATIONAL SERIES THE MINISTRY i09 BY/ ■^-^::£iLBii CHARLES LEWIS ''SLATTERY, D.D. RECTOR OF GRACE CHURCH IN NEW YORK NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1921 Copyright, 1921, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published October, 1921 PRINTED AT THE SCRIBNER PRESS NEW YORK, U. S. A. TO THE SACRED MEMORY OF E. M. S. WHOSE WISDOM, SACRIFICE, AND LOVE ENRICHED THE MINISTRIES OF A HUSBAND AND A SON PREFACE This book has been written not only for men seeking to know their vocation, but also for men who have definitely decided to enter the ministry. Some men will be patient and, in its printed order, read the book through. Others may care to use it to answer this question or that. I hope that the table of contents will lead them to the answers which they seek. Obviously no handbook such as this may be counted a sufficient guide. Biography will give color to dry details; and varied biographies of the ministry abound. Two books especially I suggest as vivid, con- crete illustrations of the life of the ministry. One of them chances to be a book which I had the privilege of writing — the "Life of Edward Lincoln Atkinson."* The book is * Published by Longmans, Green, & Co., London and New York. vii viii PREFACE so truly Atkinson's that I have no qualms in drawing attention to the happy expe- rience of his brief ministry ; for it will tell a young man what he may expect at the be- ginning. The other book is John Watson's *'Cure of Souls."* Here the reader will find the rich experience of an older man. C. L. S. Grace Church Rectory New York 28 July 192 1 ♦ Published by Dodd, Mead, & Co., New York. CONTENTS CHAPTE5R PAOB I. The Call of Every Man . . i II. What the Ministry Is . . . 8 III. The Essentials of a Call to the Ministry 17 IV. Types Useful for the Ministry 31 I. THE gentleman .... 3 1 II. THE MAN WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR 34 III. THE MAN WITH A STRONG BODY 38 IV. THE MAN WITH IMAGINATION 4 1 V. THE SCHOLAR .... 44 VI. THE PRACTICAL MAN. . . 48 VII. THE REFORMER .... 50 VIII. THE MYSTIC 57 IX. THE COMPOSITE TYPE . . 6I V. The Preparation 65 I. IN SCHOOL 65 II. IN COLLEGE ^0 III. THE CHOICE OF A THEOLOG- ICAL SCHOOL .... 82 ix CONTENTS [AFTER PAGE IV. IN A THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL 87 V. IN ALL EXPERIENCE . . . I06 VI. The Specific Opportunity . . 112 I. PREACHER AND PASTOR . . II3 II. A TEACHER OF THEOLOGY . 1 24 III. A MASTER IN A CHURCH SCHOOL FOR BOYS . . 1 29 IV. AN EXPERT IN SOCIAL AME- VII. VIII. lioration .... . 131 V. AN ADMINISTRATOR . 135 VI. HOW TO FIND one's PLACE 138 The Necessity of the Ministry 139 I. IN THE COMMUNITY . . 143 II. IN THE NATION . 151 III. IN WORLD RELATIONSHIPS 154 The Compensations of the Ministry 160 I. ENOUGH TO LIVE UPON . 160 II. THE JOY OF ADVENTURE 165 III. THE LOVE OF HUMANITY 168 A. IN THE COUNTRY . 169 B. IN THE TOWN . . 176 C. IN THE CITY 182 D. IN THE MISSION FIELD 189 IV. THE LOVE OF GOD . . 197 THE MINISTRY I THE CALL OF EVERY MAN It is a thrilling moment in the life of any boy when he decides what he shall do with his life as a whole. The normal time for such a decision is in the years from fourteen to eighteen, when the wonder of the world is opening the eyes to mystery, responsi- bility, and God. The first choice may not be the permanent choice; but, if it is made with earnestness and sincerity, it becomes an element in the permanent purpose, so far as that permanent purpose reflects the best ideals of boyhood, untarnished by the policy and compromise of later manhood. If there has been no adequate response when the soul wakes up and asks for a task worthy of a lifetime, if the decision has been faced only to be postponed, then the man must, as soon as he can, fix upon a 2 THE MINISTRY vocation. Some grave crisis, such as an ill- ness, a startling opportunity, or a war, may arouse one from littleness to greatness. But most people recognize small distinc- tion between one day and another. Not on a mountain-top, but on a dusty plain, the decision must in many instances be made. When a man is more than eighteen years old and has not yet fastened upon a life work, he ought to be deeply concerned. It may require several years to see the in- evitable vocation meant for him, but he must not drift, waiting for the winds to blow him into port. He must study his ambitions, his capacities; most of all he must ask God to show him what to do. And when he sees the work meant for him he must do it, whatever his relatives and companions may say about it. Relatives and companions are not always safe counsellors. Fathers and mothers who are worldly often have unworldly children. Sometimes a boy at school, moved by the appeal of a hero like Doctor Grenfell, sees in a flash what possibilities are ready for him; he too might go to some far-off fron- tier and give friendship and skill to people THE CALL OF EVERY MAN 3 in lonely need. The bank and the office look unattractive and cheap. A master in the school discovers his dream, encourages him, talks over details of preparation, fires his imagination with the happiness that such a life of wholly unselfish service offers one. The boy is sure of himself. Vacation days come. In a summer morning under the trees he opens the subject to his father: the boy's eyes shine. The garden is like another paradise, and God is walking there. If any father picks up this book I ask him to imagine what he would say to such a son, declaring such a vision. If he smiles patronizingly, explaining that the dream is very pretty, but is wholly unprac- tical; if he tries to dissuade his son from what in his heart he believes too great a sacrifice for a boy of his ; if he tells him how earnestly he wants him to stay in the great city and continue his own lucrative busi- ness; if the apparently loving tones take effect, and the boy slips down from the exalted plane where he has been living, and regretfully, pathetically accepts the com- monplace career which the so-called loving father pictures for him — then that father is 4 THE MINISTRY worse than a murderer: he has stabbed the beautiful spirit of his son ; he has left a poor dragged-out being, who shall go on to dull prosperity, a failure in God's sight. I write with intense feeling, because I know the folly and irreverence with which some fathers have treated their boys' ideals. I should like to warn boys that they must even in boyhood remember the Master who said: ''He that loveth his father . . . more than me, is not worthy of me." Even a father's love may reach only the superficial in his boy's life; it is only a great and true love which may love the boy's immortal soul. A boy should rejoice in his father's care for him; but he should demand that his father love the very best that is in him. And then there are mothers. A mother is apt to have more courage than a father. Often she dedicates her child in the cradle to some difficult, heroic life. And she is apt to be readier for sacrifice. The way mothers let their boys go off to the war demonstrated what mothers are. But a mother is sometimes unduly modest about her son. She fears that though he is willing to do some hard work for men, he will not THE CALL OF EVERY MAN 5 be adequate. She would gladly send him forth; but she does not wish him to be com- mon, mediocre, perhaps a failure. She thinks of a man who essayed just such a life — and behold him now, frayed, discour- aged, forlorn ! No: she says, so far as she can see, there is no material in the life of herself or her husband to assure her that their son would have the requisite metal for such testing. He had better do something prosaic and easy — something in which she thinks he could be sure of success. She is afraid to take risks. She uses what influ- ence she has to dissuade him. Her love is so great that her influence is decisive. The boy turns away from his dream, utterly discouraged. He must be prosperous, and just like the multitude. His dear mother loves him, but not enough. It is hard to tell a boy that there is anything higher than a mother's love; but there is. If God speaks to his heart and tells him that there is a life to be lived, he must reach out for that life, and hope to win his mother's sym- pathy for it as he enters its peril. Then there are companions. Most boys like to do things together. The leaders are 6 THE MINISTRY few, and the crowds who follow them are innumerable. If this is true of mature men, it is superlatively true of boys. It is em- barrassing to think that your cronies will draw their heads together and speak merry words about your starting to prepare your- self for some profession or occupation which they think a presumption of piety or conceit. A right-minded boy will not wish to pub- lish his decision. It is a sacred hope which he wishes to tell only to one or two older persons at most. Only a prig would court publicity. But he imagines that the fellows of his own age must some way suspect him of setting himself up to be different, if not better. Any one who is going to make the important decision must be willing to stand alone if need be, to cast off all thought of what others will think. Independence and loyalty require a boy to say to himself that so high a choice as the choice of one's voca- tion must be beyond and above all con- sideration of that public opinion which a boy most dreads — the adverse judgment of the boys with whom he plays or studies or works. He may incidentally comfort him- self with the conviction that they will ulti- THE CALL OF EVERY MAN 7 mately respect only that companion who sees straight and does what is right accord- ing to his own conscience. But just now his one thought must be the frank deter- mination to make his choice according to the leadership of God alone. II WHAT THE MINISTRY IS This whole book attempts to explain the ministry. At this point it seems wise to put down in as few words as possible what the ministry is. The rest of the book, it is hoped, will fill in the details. I The ministry is, first of all, a profession which allows a man to spend his whole life in helping others. That is his business. The community supports him for that pur- pose. A man in business sometimes gives one night a week to a boys' club. As he becomes interested in the individual boys he goes to see them in their homes. Then he becomes interested in the parents. He sees conditions in American homes which need radical reform. He knows that only personal service can effect this reform. He wishes he could give three nights a week 8 WHAT THE MINISTRY IS 9 and several days each week to the beguiling work for his boys. But he cannot. After all, he must give his chief attention to his business that his family may be supported, and that his colleagues in business may know that he is not shirking his share of the work. Inevitably he must look with envy upon the parson who is set free to spend all his time in doing just such work as his boys* club opens to him in vision. The best men long to serve. Every good man tries to do what he can for others. The ministry sets a man free to spend all his time in service. II You will instantly think of the doctor and the teacher. Their lives, too, are dedicated to doing unselfish good; and the world would be a forlorn place without them. All honor to them in their superb service ! But their work is essentially limited to the bodies and minds of men. It is quite true that many a doctor heals the sick soul of his patient, and many a teacher builds up the soul of his pupil, but that is not their necessary function. In so far as they be- 10 THE MINISTRY stow these larger benefits, they are entering the special domain of the ministry. The ministry helps in any way it can: it teaches, it binds up wounds, it gives bread ; but its essential function is to help men in the highest and deepest places in their lives. When they are glad, the ministry tries to make them generous with their joy; when they are grief-stricken, the ministry tries to give them hope; when they have confessed awful sin, the ministry tries to open the door of their despair into genuine repen- tance and the assurance of God's forgive- ness. The very best part of the work of the ministry is hidden, because it is confi- dential. It is a great thing, when you have reached a high or a deep place in life, to know that there is a man in the community to whom you have a right to go. Your friend might be bored or shocked; your family might be incredulous or distressed. The parson, you discover, exists for this very purpose: he is to help men in the high and the deep places in life. He may fail. But he will try. And what you tell him, no one else in the world will be told. WHAT THE MINISTRY IS ii If it is a great thing when you are exalted or abased to know that there is such a would-be helper of mankind, think what it must be to be that man himself. Can you imagine how he must rejoice that men, whether many or few, count on him in the supreme moments of life? Do you think he envies any famous man his fame, any rich man his riches, any powerful man his power? No; there is no place in life which he would exchange for his own place. He is thrilled with the thought that he is expected to help men in the heights and the depths, and he reaches out with all his might not to disappoint them. This help is given in various ways. It is often given face to face. It is quite as often given by sermons, which are straight attempts to speak to a congregation as one would speak to an earnest friend who wished to reflect upon the secrets of a good life — begun, continued, and ended in God. Occasionally the help is given by an oflicial act like a baptism or a marriage or a funeral into which the personality of the minister has been poured, because he himself has been deeply moved. His voice has uncon- 12 THE MINISTRY sciously revealed how much he cares; and therefore men suspect how his Master cares. The help is also given in the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion, when the people, obeying the command of Christ, come espe- cially near not only to one another but to Christ Himself, so that their lives are fused in Him and His life enters into them in the simplicity of a mutual loyalty and a loving faith. Really there is no end of the ways in which a man serves, once he takes the service of Christian ministrations as his one and only business in life. Ill The vocation of the ministry would be hopelessly baffling if a man had to depend on his own strength. He is trained to look for and to find the help which his difficult task involves. He finds this help in two ways. The first way is through others. In the begin- ning, a man depends a good deal upon other people's experience. Men who teach him face to face or through the printed page WHAT THE MINISTRY IS 13 tell him the experience which has come to them. Their honesty and clear sight he cannot doubt. He trusts them. He often gives his parishioners solid assurance; giv- ing it, indeed, with gleaming eye and firm voice, because he knows good men whose word he can and does absolutely trust. He has entered into their experience and appro- priated it; and it is, in a genuine sense, his possession. Little by little, as his ministry grows, he learns immediately what life at its highest and deepest is. He sees it in the faces of his sorrowing or triumphant parishioners. "The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain." He knows certain facts of life, hitherto hidden from all eyes, as surely as the scientist sees certain other facts of life through his powerful microscope. As he helps, he is helped. As he brings assurance, he receives assurance. Naturally shrink- ing from the delicacy of his mission, he is fortified by the constantly enlarging knowl- edge which his experience with men is giving him. As the years pass, he can say with increasing conviction, "This I know." 14 THE MINISTRY B The other way in which a minister finds help for his work is by a growing intimacy with God. A youth is rightly modest about his knowledge of God. He knows that if he is to assist men in the highest and deep- est places in life he must bring them through all human assurances to a spot where they will be alone with God. There, quite alone, they will receive the aid which only God can give. But men will ask hard questions about God; and the neophyte is frightened lest his knowledge of God be too dim, too inarticulate, to form a basis of introduc- tion. Now what can be said about this ? First, a man who goes into the ministry is expected to spend a good deal of time in prayer and in quiet reflection (which may be a deeper kind of prayer, because it is lis- tening to God). To act well in any voca- tion, a man must pray and think. One does not go into the difficulties of the minis- try fully equipped. The equipment is given day by day to the man who asks and then listens. There need be no fear. Secondly, public worship means more to WHAT THE MINISTRY IS 15 the minister than to any one else in the church. In much of the service, he speaks in the presence of the people, for them and for himself, before God. Their silent and most real worship is joined to his. The fact that it is common worship makes it possible for each person in the church to come nearer to God than he could come if he were alone. The spiritual energy of the devotion and aspiration of all is, in some wonderful way, given to each one. But every man must make his own effort ; then the reinforcement is given. Public worship can be for the minister no perfunctory or formal act. It is fundamental. He goes out of church knowing that God is closer to him, more intimately his companion, more truly the source and end of all the help he would give to mankind. In the third place, a minister is helped, as the days pass, by appreciating that he is a member of Christ's glorified body. Christ is his Master, his Head. Not only is he responsible to his Leader, who is both human and divine; but this divine and human Leader is also responsible to him. The help which the minister is appointed i6 THE MINISTRY to give IS not isolated and sporadic; it is organized and continuous. One stands be- hind the ministry of the Church, who is using now this man, now that, to bring His unfaiHng strength to the children of His Father. The man who tries hardest in his own strength, at last, with all honest prep- aration, yields himself to be a medium through which the omnipotent Strength may pass into the life of the man whom the minister would help with the Greatest and the Best. Then he stands aside, as it were, and beholds the wonderful works of God. The ministry gives a man the most efiec- tive and necessary service which one man can hope to give to another. And the man who undertakes it need not be afraid. He will himself steadily be given the help whereby he may be confident that he shall be able to give the surest help to others. Ill THE ESSENTIALS OF A CALL TO THE MINISTRY Let us now imagine that the boy or young man who reads this book is wonder- ing if he is not intended for the ministry of the Church. The first question such a per- son will ask is whether he believes he has a call to the ministry. Before defining what might constitute the signs of a call to the ministry, I must draw attention to the fact that it is no more essential for a clergyman to be called to the ministry than it is for a teacher to be called to teaching, or a lawyer to the law, or a merchant to the shop. As you look over the people of a com- munity there are certain men whom you in- stantly decide could have done no other work than the work they are doing. There 17 i8 THE MINISTRY is the family physician. He is so far essen- tial to the lives within many houses, he is so blithe in the presence of joy or of slight ills, he is so firm and sure in the hour of great need, he is so absorbed in his profes- sion, that you could not for one moment imagine him anything but a doctor. You know that he has been called of God. Then there is the famous banker, known perhaps on two continents. You look deeply into his life. You see that long ago the mere desire to make money evaporated. He is interested in huge enterprises. He makes railroads and steamships possible. He is secretly caring for the unfortunate. He is sensitive to public panic, and often so stills feverish men that a national calamity is averted. He watches men who are honest in the moment of their danger, comes cheer- ily into their offices, tells them all that he has is behind them; and they are saved. He sees a bank about to fail, bringing into its crash widows and orphans; he puts his wealth into it, and there is no ''run on the bank"; all men trust it. It may seem a very worldly task to be a banker. But this man whom I have described you know God A CALL TO THE MINISTRY 19 has called to be a banker; you could not imagine him anything else. I remember going into a cabinetmaker's shop years ago. I wished this man to make me some Chip- pendale chairs. He showed me a distin- guished old chair which he said he would copy. I said, "Will you copy it exactly"? His eyes flashed. "I shall make better chairs," he cried; and then he showed me a certain line which I saw could be im- proved. Afterwards he broke part of a chair which he was just making to show me that it would break anywhere but in the strong joint, which his craft had fastened. That man, I knew, God had called to be a cabinetmaker; and to this day I look at those chairs with the reverence with which I look upon a beautiful picture or the sonnet of a master poet. In contrast with the men who are ob- viously called, there are the rank and file in every town, in every city, who have no sense of vocation. They are like dumb, driven cattle. They work because they must, or they do no work at all because they can eat the bread of idleness. No one likes to see a clergyman who, so far as 20 THE MINISTRY one can determine, has no sense of voca- tion. Neither does one Hke to see any man, whatever his occupation, who is not sure that he has been called to do what he is doing. The responsibility to get God's verdict on what you are meant to do is im- perative throughout the length and breadth of life. Do not comfort yourself with the thought that you can go into any work in life without a call, provided you have the least hope of being anything more than a nonentity. In whatever direction you turn, you must put yourself to the pains of know- ing the signs which will indicate to you that you have a call from God. II If you have, then, an inclination to con- sider the claims which the ministry has upon you, how shall you decide whether God has called you to it? For some men the heavens open, as they opened for St. Paul, and there is the light brighter than the light of the sun; everything is imme- diately clear. If you are called in such a manner you have nothing to do but obey. But most men are obliged to think out A CALL TO THE MINISTRY 21 the problem in a dimmer, more gradual light. They may in the end be exactly as sure; for God's revelation is always to the man who desires to receive it. God will always open the door to the man who knocks. The experience of older men may show to youth some of the signs by which God might indicate a call to the ministry. In the first place, the superficial qualities of voice, presence, so-called gifts of oratory, may be put aside. They are only useful if more important things have been weighed. A man with a rich voice, imposing presence, facility in utterance, may easily be only a pompous seven-day wonder, whose words and life carry neither conviction nor help. On the other hand, a man with a defect in his speech, of insignificant presence, of no skill in marshalling w^ords, may be the in- spiration of the Holy Spirit to all who hear his voice or look into his eyes, because he has certain qualities which the other man wholly lacks. Charles Lamb stuttered: I have often thought what a wonderful min- ister he would have been — not because he stuttered, but because he had qualities which would have made his parishioners 22 THE MINISTRY first love him and then follow his virtues, without a thought about the manner of his utterance. I do not mean that the super- ficial qualities may not help or hinder; what I emphasize here is that they are not funda- mental. Further, young people often have the im- pression that only learned men ought to be in the ministry. A learned ministry is ex- ceedingly desirable; but most clergymen to-day could not qualify before adequate judges as learned men; and these men who are not in any sense learned, but who have other admirable qualities, are often among the most valuable officers the Christian Church has now, or has ever had. There are certain demands which the Church makes for education in the ministry; but these do not include such acquirements as would entitle a man to be called learned; nor do they make a barrier to any one who has only a very fair mental equipment. If a young man feels the call to active life rather than to the life of a student, the ministry may still be for him. Certain posts in the life of the Church require men of wide and deep knowledge. Other posts A CALL TO THE MINISTRY 23 may be manned by men whose knowledge is only moderate, provided always that they have the fundamental qualities of which I shall presently speak. I am trying to sweep aside the qualities which are subor- dinate, that you may fix your attention on the two qualities which seem to me of ele- mentary importance. The former of these two fundamental tests is so obvious that it seems superfluous to mention it. It is encouraging that we may believe that young men seeking the ministry in our time take it for granted. Nevertheless it must be put down as the primary qualification for the ministry. It is this: Are you determined to lead a good and honorable life? You will say that this is the question which belongs to every Christian man upon the threshold of his Christian responsibility. And you are quite right. No layman may point the finger to the black deed of a clergyman and grant himself as a layman the privilege of doing the same black deed without blame. Both are equally bad in the sight of God. Only, 24 THE MINISTRY when a clergyman goes wrong, he carries with him the people who have trusted him as a leader and guide. They are more than simply shocked or scandalized; the props of life are suddenly knocked from under them. They feel that no one can be trusted. Their faith has been cruelly mocked. On the other hand, the transparent goodness of a clergyman has kept many a man in his town on the right track. When I say good- ness I mean not simply Innocence (though I do mean that) but unselfishness, kindness, quickness to speak up for the unpopular right, forgiveness of injury, patience, de- tachment from the things of the world, evenness of judgment. Lest the suggestion of such a catalogue of virtues as this seem overwhelming, it must be pointed out that these virtues are put before one as a goal. One desires them, one will honestly strive for them. We generally attain in life what we honestly strive for. If a young man, looking at the ministry, really wants to lead the finest and truest life he can discover, then he has ful- filled the first of the qualifications for the ministry. A CALL TO THE MINISTRY 25 There are one or two details connected with such a principle which must be frankly examined. A man may hold back from the ministry because of an egregious sin in the past. If he be truly penitent, a man who has known the depths is sometimes turned into the best of saints. The youth of Augustine of Hippo was, the world would say, hopeless. Yet, by the grace of God, Augustine became one of the saints of all time. He never condoned his past; but it did not prevent his entrance into the minis- try. The man who has never fallen into a disastrous sin is occasionally so complacent that he is a veritable Pharisee, blind to all the irritating faults which make him the contempt of his neighbors. It is not what a man has been, but what he means to be which is the serious question as he faces his choice. Another detail to be considered is that a boy is saved certain temptations if he de- termine early to go into the ministry. A great vocation set before one is something like a man's engagement to a noble and beautiful woman; as a man engaged to marry one whom he honors supremely does 26 THE MINISTRY all he can to make himself worthy, so a man, decided to enter the ministry, does all he can to make himself worthy of what he believes a supreme vocation. He keeps himself unspotted from the world. He has an inspiring and positive reason for keeping himself at his best. One more detail there Is to think of. Every one in his senses wishes to be of fine character. What would one not give to have one's face shine with the goodness which now and again shines in the face of the truly good man, the man of positive attainment in character! A rarely attrac- tive compulsion of the ministry is that day by day it urges a man on to be his best. Other men do not feel the same need per- haps of absolute probity; they may not feel that so much depends upon it. The minis- ter is always conscious of the necessity of being good, in the sense farthest from cant and smugness — really and deeply good. He is fortunate beyond other men that he has this stimulus. While we must remember this in all its strength, we must also be assured that the power of the ministry is not in ourselves. A CALL TO THE MINISTRY 27 but in God. No preacher, for example, would dare to limit his message to his own attainment. It is what he longs to be, not what he is, of which a man thinks as he preaches. The shining example to which he beckons men is not even the best man he has ever known; but it is the absolutely perfect incarnate Son of God. If the desire to be good is the first of the fundamental tests by which a man may discover his call to the ministry, the second is the genuine desire to help individual peo- ple. A man who enjoys preaching to a church full of people, but is bored by the individual members of the congregation, ought not to be in the ministry. A young man who was teaching school the first year after his graduation from college, left a friend with whom he was walking and crossed the street to speak to a man. Re- turning, he explained to his friend that the man to whom he spoke had a boy in his school; he wished to tell him how well his boy was doing, how satisfactory the boy was, etc. The friend smiled and said: 28 THE MINISTRY "You ought to go into the ministry; that's the sort of thing ministers do." He did go into the ministry, and became one of the very best ministers imaginable. His friend made a sagacious comment ; Interest in Indi- viduals, caring sufficiently to go out of one's way to help, thinking and doing what strikes most deeply for one man at a time, count- ing each man as he comes worthy of one's best efforts — all that is indication that one is called of God to go Into the ministry. I have mentioned two outstanding tests by which one may judge if one has been called of God to go into the ministry. I have not spoken of belief. I have not spoken of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. I have not forgotten the importance of belief. I have not forgotten the supreme importance of trust in our divine Master. It is because I am sure that if a man does all he can to keep Christ's commandments (that Is, to be simply and truly good as Christ taught and lived) then he shall know the doctrine (as Christ promised); and fur- ther, if he goes about helping individuals A CALL TO THE MINISTRY 29 (people in prison, ragged, hungry, sick), he shall find Christ (who said: "Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me"). And if a man tries to be as good as he can be and to help people as much as he can, then he will cry out to have his life filled with Christ, not only that Christ may give His perfection to absorb the man's imper- fection, but that Christ may speak through his lips, and act through his hands, to help people, one by one, just as He helped them in Galilee years upon years ago. The hid- den yet ever present Christ is the secret of all our enthusiasm as we seek the ministry of His Church. That we may test ourselves and know that our enthusiasm is not emo- tion merely, but is solid, and therefore acceptable to Him, we ask two questions: Do I wa7tt to follow Him — that is, do I want to be good as He was good? Do I want to serve with all my being those whom He calls His brothers, one by one, each according to his need? If you can answer these two questions with a frank and joyful Yes, I think that you will see the light brighter than the 30 THE MINISTRY light of the sun. I think that the Lord Christ will speak to you, telling you that He needs you to preach His Gospel, in deed and in word, to all the people whom you can possibly reach. IV TYPES USEFUL FOR THE MINISTRY Certain types of men enter the ministry with such quahties as conduce to its effec- tiveness. These types may not be essen- tial to what in the best sense we may call success. Men of quite different character- istics may be so strong and able that they can win without qualities which for ordinary men are indispensable. But for every man it is an advantage to partake in some degree at least of the qualities which in this chap- ter are set down. If a man can answer the demands set forth in the last chapter, he will find encouragement if he have these additional traits. I THE GENTLEMAN To be a gentleman is for one man ex- ceedingly easy, for another supremely diffi- cult. The fact that a man's ancestors have 31 32 THE MINISTRY been what in a technical sense are called gentlefolk does not necessarily assure his own gentility. The vulgar boors who are brutes to their wives, bores to their friends, and a scandal to the youth of the land, are quite apt to be what are called well-born. They have an innate selfishness and crude- ness which make them an abhorrence to all decent people. The thin veneer of good clothes and conventional manners make their cheap characters only the shabbier and more disgusting to the discreet ob- server. On the other hand out of the simplest environment have often come the most shining examples of the gentleman in suc- ceeding generations. The man who is al- ways gracious but not effusive, who is dig- nified but not prim, who sees everything but notices nothing which could embarrass, who avoids the words which wantonly open wounds, who, in a word, is invariably kind, and is able to show forth his kindness, is quite as likely to be born in a cottage as in a palace. The title of gentleman trans- cends all class boundaries. It is one of the great words of life. In the last analysis a TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 33 gentleman, like a poet, is born — not made. And again, like a poet, the gentleman can- not be sure that his son will succeed to his genius. The poet's son has amazing oppor- tunities if he is inclined to write verse; the gentleman's son has also amazing oppor- tunities if he is inclined to practise the fine art of inherent kindness nobly expressed; but gentlemen in successive generations can be no more assumed than poets can be assumed. The gentlemen and the poets quite often appear in strange corners of humanity. They are born, not made. In every town, in every school, in every college, are the youth who stand out as gentlemen. They are the delight of all who know them. One relies on them in emer- gencies. If a willing hand is needed they are always ready to put aside their own convenience and do the deed which needs to be done. The old are touched by their invariable respect and remembrance; the young look up to them and follow in what- ever leadership they may possess. Even the dumb creatures like them. They are unselfish, considerate, tactful. In one word, they are kind; everything is rooted in their 34 THE MINISTRY kindness. But kindness alone will not make a gentleman. A gentleman is a kind man who has both the intelligence and the skill to show forth his kindness. A youth who is growing up to be a gen- uine gentleman, or a man who is in the full power of his gentility, has an exceptional qualification for the ministry. He is a type which the ministry diligently seeks. He will, in his own life, make Christ winning and attractive. Men knowing him will the better understand our Master. II THE MAN WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR There have been men in the ministry with admirable records for service who had not a ray of humor. They were personally good, they cared for each person committed to them with unfailing loyalty, and they did all the details of their office punctually, accurately, feelingly. But they met all the irritations and inconveniences of life with an invariable seriousness. They worried when they might have laughed. There were alleviating conditions, humorous situa- TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 35 tions, which they never so much as saw. They might have found relief in the queer incidents of the morning for the awful sor- row which they would have to face in the afternoon; they might have come to the problem before them with a readier solu- tion if they had accepted the variety of experience as God had given it to them. There are good men in the ministry without a sense of humor; but they are not as good as they would have been had they pos- sessed it. If a man has no sense of humor as a natural endowment, he would wisely not attempt to cultivate it. The man who is not funny but tries to be funny is very sad. He makes every one sorry for him. Simply to repeat the story which has made others laugh, and to repeat it because they laughed, is a melancholy performance. Humor may be accompanied by a relish for amusing tales, but it is in no way depen- dent upon it. Humor is a discoverer, and thereby an interpreter, of life. It sees what the average intelligence passes by, just as the artist sees sunlight playing upon the scene where other men see only a monot- 36 THE MINISTRY onous landscape. It sees sorrow as well as joy; for pathos and tears are close to laughter. It breaks up the drab evenness of life, and catches the high lights as it finds immediately beside them the deep shadows. One of the most astute judges of char- acter in his time was James Greenleaf Croswell. I saw him once after he had witnessed a play by Bernard Shaw. He was disturbed by the play; he thought it vulgar. But he was still more disturbed by the audience. "They laughed," he said, "at the wrong times. The really humor- ous passages they ignored in silence; and they roared with merriment when they should have wept." The son of a clergy- man, he was a great schoolmaster. His clean-cutting humor was an element in his success; it would have been an element in his success also had he followed his father in his vocation. A boy or a young man with a sense of humor sometimes fears that the ministry to which he is drawn cannot rightly be his, because he cannot always repress his mirth. He has always associated the ministry. TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 37 for some strange reason, with perpetual solemnity; and he fears that he would dis- grace it and himself. What must be said with all possible emphasis is that if one has this natural gift of humor, one has a gift from God for the effectiveness of the minis- try. If it is pure and honorable in all its thoughts and words, a sense of humor not only saves a man from absurd awkward- ness, self-consciousness, and conceit, but it binds him to his friends in a deep human sympathy; and even the stranger, seeing the gleam in the eye, is moved to put confidence in the man who sees and understands, as in a flash, the variety of which life is made up. A word of warning may be added. A sense of humor may go astray; it may be- come bitter, sarcastic, cynical. A man who has allowed his humor to turn sour ought to think carefully whether he ought to go into the ministry. Charles Lamb and Dean Swift both had a sense of humor. Lamb's humor was wholesome, life-giving; Swift's was like a loathsome disease. Swift would have made a clever politician; he did not help the Christian ministry. If you find 38 THE MINISTRY your humor slipping down into cutting per- sonalities, cruel flings against your victims, venom against the world generally, pull yourself up while there is time. You are in danger of turning one of God's precious gifts into that which will ruin not only your own happiness, but the happiness also of all your family, friends, and neighbors. Save for the ministry the gladness of an unspoiled sense of humor. Ill THE MAN WITH A STRONG BODY Mere physical strength may be absurd. To have protruding muscles may not fit a man for anything but the side-show of a circus. Physical strength which spells en- durance, peace of mind under strain, ability to work hard and long without breaking in any way is a wondrous achievement. Often athletes are overtrained, and though they win in youth astonishing victories on the field, they are not able to cope with the opportunities of later life. The ministry does not need or expect prodigious physical strength; it does ask for a well-hardened TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 39 body, able to endure strenuous work and nervous strain. A good deal of a clergyman's work must be among the sick and the poor. If a p^is- toral call means to the sick man, not only sympathy and prayer, but also an infusion of strength from the presence of a strong and loving man, that call has done good to both the soul and the body of the invalid. In the same way when conditions are hard in the home, and want is not far away, the call of the clergyman who does not so much suggest submission to what has been, as hope for the strength and prosperity which honest effort may bring in the future, is a call amply blessed through that clergyman's strong body. Our Saviour once said that He perceived that strength had gone out of Him. A good man who is physically strong and well is consciously or unconsciously giving his strength and health to those who are weak, discouraged, fainting. He may Well thank God that his spirit dwells in a sound body. All other things equal, the ministry of a man whose body is firm and reliable has an enormous advantage for Christian service in 40 THE MINISTRY every department over his colleague whose body is frail and uncertain. The work in any parish, in country or in city, ought to be exacting, even if a man has not found or made it so. The problems of individuals, and the problems of a parish as a whole, demand the most energetic service a man has it in him to give. He must go in and out diligently among the houses, he must study, he must prepare sermons, he must be to some extent a man of business, he must do certain things with his own hands if others fail, he must do his share for the in- stitutions of the Church or the community, serving on committees, making plans for them, and doing many other tasks besides. It is a life of variety, and that variety lessens the strain of the amount of w^ork he must do. Yet, if he live up to his oppor- tunity, the volume of work is great. His strong body is an asset for which he is as thankful on Sunday morning in church as he is on Wednesday evening at an impor- tant meeting for parochial business, or on Thursday afternoon when he climbs the hill to make pastoral calls. The impression that the clergy are anae- TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 41 mic and wan is fairly dissipated in our day, for they are not; but the husky youth, earnestly wilHng to enter the ministry may not be aware how important is the body w^hich God has given him, and which by exercise and fine living he has protected and developed. IV THE MAN WITH IMAGINATION A man in a shop has an appointed task which he does thoroughly. While he is do- ing his routine work, he is thinking how the instrument or part which he is making could be improved. He experiments; he dreams; he sees a way — and presently he has in- vented something new which all sensible men will desire to possess. He rises in a day out of the ranks and becomes a distin- guished man. He has imagination. The Church needs men of imagination. Ways good for the nineteenth century are not, of necessity, good for the twentieth. New needs demand new methods. The Church has always been a poet, a creator. Hospitals, schools, Gothic architecture. 42 THE MINISTRY stately music, huge parish houses, all came out of the creative or inventive instinct of the Church. As the Church goes on living, it will find geniuses to express for it the solution of subtle problems. Imagination will do it. There are many earnest youths to-day who might come into the ministry of the Church, but they fear that their dissatisfac- tion with things as they are would make them unfit for work in the conserving organization of twenty centuries. They vaguely see a new course which might be worth trying; but the old men wouldn't like it — and they suspect that their imagina- tion had better be carried to some other vocation. The Church is not afraid of intelligent criticism ; the Church appeals for it to every honest critic who has any knowledge of what he is talking about. That means a critic who really cares, and is not simply captious, or, at heart, indifferent. Of whom could the Church more truly wish criticism than the devout young man who cares so much that he is deliberating whether he shall not devote his whole life to the minis- TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 43 try of the Church ? It is not unlikely that the tyro's first attempt to substitute some- thing better than the old machinery will be fantastic, wholly unpractical. But his fourth or fifth attempt, patiently and trust- ingly waited for, may bring something com- parable to a new invention in the indus- trial world. The old Gospel of Jesus Christ may be brought home to the minds and consciences of men as it has not gripped men for generations. The man with imag- ination need not fear that he is not wanted. The real leaders of the Church are not timid about his failures ; they long for his ultimate success. To have imagination is to be alert. Op- portunities knock at the door of the Church every day. New groups of foreigners come to our shores; they may be a menace to the nation if uncared for; the Church may tend them, cherish them, love them, make them noble Christian citizens. The industrial 1 groups may think the Church a selfish, out- worn bigot ; the Church might do something to make these groups bow down with joy- ful adoration to the Master of the Church. A young man who is alert cannot stand at a church door on a busy week-day without 44 THE MINISTRY wondering how he can bring the restless, hopeless faces into the joy and peace of Christ's Church. Young men are welcome to criticise every detail of the machinery of the Church, if only they will use the imagina- tion which, beginning at criticism, goes on, with vigor, to discover what they, with their courage and hope, can bring to bear upon the new times to make Christ more openly the acknowledged Lord of men. THE SCHOLAR The boundaries of acquirement and tem- perament which hem in the life of a scholar are difficult to define. A man may know almost as many facts as one can read in an encyclopaedia and yet have so little concep- tion of their relationship and worth that he can be called only a pedant. No sane judge would ever think of calling him a scholar. On the other hand a man may have excel- lent technical judgment, he may be able to weigh and compare, and yet have so little knowledge of any department of learning that he too never can be counted a scholar. TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 45 He IS like a man who knows the technique of poetry, its metres, rhythm, value of sylla- bles, but has no poetical ideas to put into his accurate mould. As one fails to be a poet, so the other fails to be a scholar. A teacher in school or college is apt to discover a boy or man in his classes who has what the expert calls "the making of a scholar." This pupil may show unusual care in the translation of Homer or Cicero; he may demonstrate a scrupulous exact- ness, and be aware of the subtle undertones which the mere literalist never seeks to in- terpret. Or the pupil may show an appre- ciation of the relative value of the events of some period of history. He seems to have an instinctive selective sense by which the chief events stand out in his mind, and the unimportant or less important dates and names cluster about them. The older man exults in a pupil who recognizes shades of meaning, who qualifies his statements, who can see both sides in an argument, who is fair-minded, not opinionated, who, in short, is by way of becoming a scholar. As youth deepens into manhood such a hopeful pupil may yearn to know the an- 46 THE MINISTRY swer to some of the deeper mysteries of life. He feels the pull of God's loving power, he reads of God's revelation of Himself in foi^mer generations, he hears sermons, lec- tures, the conversation of his elders. He would like to weigh these matters. He would, he believes, like to give himself to the life of a scholar in the Church. Possibly the energetic friend may hesitate to encourage such a youth to come into the ministry, fearing that he will be too much absorbed in books, too little interested in people. Now let us say candidly that the man who tends to be a scholar is urgently needed in the Church of our day. I shall show later how gravely he is needed in the teaching force of theological schools;* the- ology needs men who have been technically trained as scholars from their youth up; out of the depth of sound knowledge and ex- perience they are needed to teach men face to face, and by accurate, large-minded books to teach those in far-off studies who will read their words. This, however, is not the only function of scholars in the Church. The parochial and administrative ministry *See below, page 124. TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 47 needs men who weigh their words. That sort of eloquence which is simply fluent and easy to listen to is less and less accepta- ble. The man who shouts that his petty topic (whatever it may be) is the most im- portant that has engaged men's thought for two hundred years does not inspire confi- dence. Men are glad to have eloquence when it may be found, but they wish to have it harnessed to accuracy and good judgment. The scholar, or the man with a scholarly mind, may do great things for the Church, even though he spend all his days in what is called the practical work of the ministry. He may tone up the utter- ance of the practical part of the Church, making men respect not only its preaching but its business administration as well. We sometimes forget that business men, even if they have not been collegians, are educated men, because by long training they have be- come extremely careful not only in the deeds of their business but in its expression; they are, as it were, scholars in business. The practical ministry must not allow itself to be outdone by the carefulness of the com- mercial world. The Church is unfortunate 48 THE MINISTRY if those who instruct or govern it must con- tinually be explaining that such and such words were not meant at their face value or that other words must be entirely forgotten and forgiven. If any one who reads this book is keen to be a scholar in the Church, may these pages convince him that he will find adequate scope for all his inclinations, and be thereby a profitable servant in the Christian minis- try of our day. VI THE PRACTICAL MAN Another type of man useful in the minis- try is the practical man. He feels himself little apt to be a preacher; certainly, he says that he has no chance of becoming a scholar; perhaps he is quite sure that he never could be a large administrator. His gifts, if he may call them gifts, are prosaic. His eyes are wide open to details. He notices that a small boy's shoes are hope- lessly worn out; he visits the mother and discovers that, though she makes every effort to conceal it, poverty is pinching the TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 49 little family. He then finds a way to help not only the boy but all others under that roof, without wounding self-respect and without delay. He notices that the carpet in the church is worn, and he persuades an organization of women to replace it. He notices that the gas eats up the fresh air, and he persuades the men to install electric lights. There are a good many children going wild in the town; he finds a way to gather them in, interesting them in profit- able and enjoyable occupation. The ^^ex- ton falls ill suddenly; the parson builds the fire and rings the bell. The parishioners congratulate themselves upon the invariable order and promptness of all the functions of the parish, little knowing that to one ener- getic and practical man, their pastor, all this system Is due. In great things and in little he is a practical man. The practical man Is more apt to be un- derrated by himself than by others. But all men fail, as a rule, to recognize that to be thoroughly practical in all the relation- ships of life brings one close to genius. And without some dash of the practical, men possessing conspicuous qualities are prone 50 THE MINISTRY to abject failure. If, therefore, a man is so humble about his qualifications that he sees in his nature nothing to give but practical service, let him lift his head, and confi- dently ask admission to the ministry. The Church needs practical men. Not improb- ably the man who has been faithful in the details of a small work will be sought to come up higher. Posts of responsible lead- ership in the Church await men of practical genius. One might think that the practical man would easily be found. Evidently it is not so; for in all departments of leader- ship, there are men, both blind and ineffi- cient, attempting to keep their huge house- hold in order, and lamentably failing. They have not the practical gift. There is space, in all directions, for the man who is first of all practical. VII THE REFORMER No young man who thinks can be satis- fied with the world as it is to-day. Every man with a conscience knows that if right- eousness more firmly rules the world, vast TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 51 changes must come. We sigh for the com- parative peace and plenty before the Great War; but if we try to remember what we knew of the opening decade of the twen- tieth century, we do not long to return to its conditions. Out of it came the hideous scandal of a world war, and we know by the years which have passed since the armis- tice that even war has not paid the awful debt of human sin which the world allowed to roll up. It is a hopeful sign that the places where young men congregate seethe with dissatisfaction. Many a man wonders vaguely if he could by any possible art or toil contribute to the reconstruction which is obviously demanded; and then he won- ders wistfully if he could work out his share of the reconstruction as an officer in the Christian Church. The Church would welcome him on one condition. Before I name that one condi- tion, I must sweep away certain misconcep- tions which hang about the minds of most of the eager reformers outside the Church. The first of these misconceptions is that the Church is so conservative that it will cast out any one who tries to change the existing 52 THE MINISTRY order of society. There are timid souls in the Church to-day as there have been timid souls all through its history. But as they have had little influence upon its life in the past, so they have little influence to-day. From the time of our Saviour Himself the men who have led, have cut ruthlessly across the prejudices of their time, and they have always carried the oncoming generations with them. Majorities do not count if the minority (even a minority of one) is on the side of God. The human and fallible part of the Church may persecute and slay its reformers; the divine and imperishable part of the Church will give these reformers the victory, not only in the next world but in this. The Church gives the reformer the only reward a brave man can desire; that is, ultimate and permanent success. Another misconception is that the leaders of the Church are hostile to reform. What- ever may have been true of other days, the leaders now are waiting in hope for the youth who will show a better way. No more conservative body of Church leaders could be found than the Bishops of the An- glican Communion assembled at the Lam- TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 53 beth Conference in London in the summer of 1920. One of the most observant of these bishops, a man past seventy, said that to him the most marked feature of the conference was the deference with which the older men Hstened to their younger brethren. All recognized the need of re- form. The younger men, with their ten- dency to radical ideas, were given a chance to say what they would have the Church do. And the reports of the conference were much more modern and bold than the average congregation, sitting in the same deliberate fashion, would have produced. The Church leaders for whom a young man would have most respect to-day are open to conviction. They want the ardent re- former in the Church. They will give him a hearing so respectful that it may be called reverent, because they suspect that the youth may speak for the Lord. If he can prove his mission, they will give him a chance to lead. Now I am ready to announce the one condition on which the Church will wel- come the reformer. Let me put this con- dition in the words which Edward Lincoln 54 THE MINISTRY Atkinson, a young clergyman, wrote to an ardent social reformer who wondered if the ministry might be the proper place for him: Your letter warms my heart and stirs my enthusiasm. If your chief work is to be an agitator and "talker" — ^just putting a new creed on the market — I say, hesitate. Has your move- ment men of will as against emotions and vo- cabularies, men who themselves, single-handed, will resolve upon a course and immediately show those who care to look that they have started out upon it? All of us Easterners fail somehow to incarnate our principles into ac- tion. If you can acty I say God bless you and let you go — to become a god too. The heathen were right — the gods rain and thunder. They do things. Don't think I am afraid of fanati- cism. I am only afraid of inaction. Let some- body die game, as John Brown died. I wish we could make success a duty. If you go into it, you must be willing to succeed the way Brown did — and that means being a "fanatic" and "game" to the end — which often is appropri- ately death. This does not mean for one moment that the social reformer in the ministry shall not plead for what he sees to be needed in TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 55 revising the social organism. He must gain all the knowledge he can, and speak all the wisdom God shall give him to speak. But as he sees men in relationship and in the group, he must not lose sight of the individual. His whole time must not be spent in the announcement of wholesale methods, in the hopeless attempt to re- deem the mass in the mass. Even if a man's chief sin is in his wrong relationship to his brother men, and even if this wrong- headed man be multiplied into millions, yet the reformer must begin with the re- construction of individual men. When one man is made a consciously renewed man, he is as leaven. The yeast begins to work; there is hope that the whole lump will be leavened. The reformer's imposing pro- gramme comes down from the clouds and is alive in humanity. It is demonstrated to be workable. If the Church is to have reformers In succession to the great ones of the past, it must have men who aspire to make this world the kingdom of God and of His Christ; that is, a really Christian organism and not a loosely assorted collection of 56 THE MINISTRY Christian individuals; nor may they think loosely of the kingdom as an expansive, intangible vapor; they must think of it as the sum of the subjects of the King, with responsibilities to one another and to Him, and they must initiate their reform by kneeling down, as their Lord knelt down, and they must wash the feet of those, whom, one by one, they would recreate in the image of Christ. One evening in London I stood in Hyde Park and listened to a missionary from China, who preached to a throng of men from a wooden pulpit. He told of a theo- logical student who was being examined for Orders. The examiner said, "What would you say, if a man asked you, 'What shall I do to be saved?"* The young man answered promptly, "I should say, Sir, 'Do you mean business?**' That is exactly the answer the best men in the Church will give to the question of the youthful re- former when he asks if the Church wants him. If he means business, if he will put his theories into the individual life, if he will work for Peter and Mary and Paul and John, and through them start his glo- TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 57 rious conceptions into history, then the Church not only wants him, but even begs him to come in. The Church is always being reformed. If any man sees a way to make our age the greatest period of re- formation of all time, let him dare to dream, to serve, to meet opposition, if need be to die for his cause, and then let him rest confident that the Church will number him with all the saints, and strive to continue his work till it meets perfection in the kingdom fulfilled. VIII ' THE MYSTIC If one may judge from the wide-spread interest in books on prayer and on mysti- cism there is reason to believe tl>at a great many people in our time are confident that they have found a direct approach to God. Modest and reticent youth do not care to talk of the deepest emotions of their souls, but undoubtedly many earnest young men who are thinking of the possi- bility of the ministry are mystics. With- out minimizing the value of historic Chris- 58 THE MINISTRY tianity, they feel that they have a more immediate proof of God's revelation than any book or institution can show. They daily meet God face to face. They may not have any theological terms to explain their conviction. They find equally wel- come the words of Christ, **Lo, I am with you alway" and *'The Father shall give you another Comforter (which is the Holy Ghost), that he may abide with you for ever." They exult in the words of St. Paul, "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principali- ties, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to sepa- rate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." And again their hearts respond when they read, ''The Spirit itself beareth witness with our Spirit, that we are the children of God." They are humbly yet confidently on intimate terms with the Most High. The Church always welcomes the mystic. Now and again, in so far as he is obedient to his heavenly vision, he becomes the saint who dominates not only his own time TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 59 and place, but also the times that come after, in countries far separated from his own home. He gives men a sense of the presence of God, because, if his goodness match his devotion, God shines through him. He comforts as no other in sorrow. He stimulates the flimsy will. He con- founds the compromise of the worldling, and encourages the daring of the man whose eye is single. He makes men know how truly God cares for them; how truly God protects them; how truly God lives for them and in them. Like every other genius, the mystic has his base imitator. The fraudulent mystic creates his god out of his selfish prejudices and conceits, and then falls down and wor- ships his image in the cloud. Men shrink from this pseudo-mystic. He is abhorrent, in proportion to his vanity and irreverence. But he is so rarely a young man that we need not dwell on the unhappy picture. There are young men looking forward to a life deeper and deeper in the knowledge and the love of God. They may be uncer- tain whether in the distractions of the ministry they will be able to keep high their 6o THE MINISTRY ideal of communion with God. They may fear, and not unreasonably, the too fre- quent and familiar contact with the ex- ternal processes of religion. They may suspect that many in the Church are not quite in earnest, are conventional, are only nominally submitting to Christ's complete dominance. They may dread disillusion- ment. The mystic fears a grave risk when he binds his life to an institution. But the Church cries out for the mystic, and in all ages even extreme ecclesiasticism has been consistent with fervent mysticism. Shall one not count one's own security a little thing, if the other children of the heavenly Father may catch the blessed privilege of union with Him, if true religion may be spread farther and farther in the world till the joy of fellowship with God fills the earth as now it fills the heavens? Will one not run into danger of losing God by trying to possess Him in isolation ? The selfish mys- tic is in more serious peril than the mystic in bad company. God reveals Himself to love which ignores its own safety, and rises to that hill on which the loving Son of God gave His life. TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 6i If you are a mystic, give your life where your mysticism, being lost, will be for ever found. Come into the ministry of the Church and teach men to find God, that He may be revealed to them what He always has been to them (though they knew it not), their Saviour and their Friend. IX THE COMPOSITE TYPE No one who reads this chapter will see himself wholly in any one of these types which I have tried to describe. One is cer- tain to claim a portion of two or more of the types. All of us, so far as we analyze ourselves, discover that we are composite. One is a practical mystic with imagination. Another is a vigorous personality with a sense of humor and a joy in practical re- ligion. I suspect that of all possibilities the composite type is the most useful in the world; therefore God takes pains to give us variety in our characters. Resting in His love, we may believe that He will accept in the ministry of His Church all the qualities which we reverently and un- 62 THE MINISTRY selfishly use in His Name. "There aie diversities of gifts but the same Spirit.'* Examples abound. Charles Kingsley was a practical pastor, preaching homely ser- mons to his village flock. At the same time he had such vivid imagination that he repro- duced in his novels the early Christian ages (as in Hypatia), or the age of Elizabeth (as in Westward Ho!). Moreover he was vi- tally interested in social reform (as in Yeast and Alton Locke), And his physical prowess entered into all his varied success. To turn to Kingsley's great antagonist, John Henry Newman, we find a man who joined skill in theology (as demonstrated in his History of the Arians) to subtle imagina- tion (as we see it in his Dream of Gerontius), We think of Henry Ward Beecher, not only the rapt prophet, but the powerful reformer. Very often in such fusion of qualities, one desirable quality, seeming almost essen- tial, may be quite lacking. For example, a great preacher, able to fire men's souls, may have so fragile a body as to be ex- hausted after each sermon, making him doubt if ever he can preach again. One of the most glorious preachers of all time TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 63 was Frederick William Robertson, but his body was so inadequate to its task that at thirty-seven he was gone from the weakness and limitations of this world ; leaving, how- ever, behind him the report of sermons which perhaps have influenced more men and women than any preacher's whose ser- mons have come down to us. Another ex- ample of a similar victory over physical weakness Is George Tyrrell. The short- sighted policy which would exclude all frail constitutions from the ministry would de- prive the church of some of its most inspir- ing leaders. The question to ask, as one looks towards the ministry is not what lack there may be here or there, but what are the positive capacities which can transcend defects, and bring to the Church a superb gift of human service. In any case, the most useful men are they who combine in their characters and attain- ments several of these types. Thus the ministry is made rich; and men know that it attracts and uses the most varied and win- ning of human traits. Do not despair be- cause you feel yourself w^eak in one or other of the characteristics, but select your 64 THE MINISTRY strongest good, strengthen it in itself, and build about it so staunch a wall of other qualities, that it will give to your ministry color and joy and abounding fruit. V THE PREPARATION If a young man, receiving an intimation that the ministry is for him, wishes to test that intimation, he will naturally ask what would be required of him should he decide ultimately to be a clergyman. Before he examines what would be expected of him in the actual exercise of the ministry he must find out whether he is willing to take the time and to do the work which (by the experience of others) would make him use- ful upon his ordination. I IN SCHOOL If a boy in a high school, or in a boarding- school, should feel the impulse to consider the ministry as his vocation, he ought to make up his mind to go to college. Excel- lent clergymen have had no college train- ing; but they did not deliberately omit it. 65 66 THE MINISTRY The call to the ministry has come to them in business or in the law or in medicine. They cannot prepare now as they might have prepared had they seen in boyhood what their final calling was to be. The mo- ment a boy sees the ministry before him, he should desire the best education he can get. And he should determine that the first part of that education should be to fit himself for college. Since the kind of college course one shall take is partly determined by the studies of one*s preparatory education, some thought must be given to the courses one shall choose in school. Latin and Greek should be started as early as possible, that one may go on with them in college. Doubt- less many have understood the New Testa- ment who have not known Greek, but no one who has really studied the New Testa- ment in Greek would willingly give up the subtle insight which an accurate knowledge of the Greek language has given him into the truth of the New Testament. Latin is equally important: it is an indispensable element in the equipment of a cultivated man. That it is a dead language, that it THE PREPARATION 67 is not obviously practical to learn it, is one reason why it is well to learn it. The long experience of educated men is by no means to be offset by the suspicious questionings of a generation, almost past, which set too great store on what it narrowly called "practical." If some immediate proof be needed for the value of Latin and Greek, apart from the training in exactness and intellectual toil, it is particularly wise to remember that nothing so stimulates a boy or a man to concise and varied expression in English as the translation of a Greek or Latin classic into the vernacular. As a boy grows to see the shades of meaning in an ancient foreign word his own English vo- cabulary is enlarged to meet the need. The best English is written, not by the quacks in literature who go far afield to be queer and startling in their use of words, but by the experts who have come, through the years, to an exact knowledge how most simply to express in English the intricate thought which has been presented to them in another language. This is particularly true of Latin and Greek, because they are, 68 THE MINISTRY to a large extent, the foundation of English. The old prescribed course of school and college — Greek, Latin, mathematics, with only a misty fringe of history, science, and modern literature — may never return. Very likely we may have something better if we keep steadfastly in mind that some things are to be thoroughly learned, and that we shall not be content with a general smattering of the beginnings of many things. One of the college courses for which one will make ready in school is some course in science. The clergyman who knows some- thing in science fairly well is a more useful man. He may be interested in botany, in geology, in astronomy. Rather than have a superficial knowledge of every branch of science (even if that were possible), far better is It for him to fix upon a natural science which commands his enthusiasm from the first. He may wisely consider this In his school days. Every high school or boarding-school in- cludes courses in English reading. But aside from such prescribed courses, the boy ought to be reading, for diversion, certain of the great American and English story- THE PREPARATION 69 tellers. He ought to know Washington Irving, Hawthorne, Stevenson, Dickens, Thackeray, Walter Scott. These will all require some effort on his part. Each is quite different from all the rest. The cheap and easy tale of the day he may read with- out harm; he can hardly read it with much profit. The youth of seventeen who can- not speak intelligently of Rip Van Winkle, David Balfour, Mr. Micawber, Henry Es- mond, Colonel Newcome, Quentin Dur- ward — and a good many others besides — has wasted his hours of freedom. Even if he is quite sure that he is to go into the ministry, no sane guide wishes or expects him to read St. Augustine's Confessions^ Thomas a Kempis's Imitation, or Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying. The boy would not understand them if he did read them. His religious reading should be the religious reading of every wholesome normal boy. The four Gospels should be his main de- pendence. Over and over let them be read; then let him catch the music of Ro- mans viii, I Corinthians xiii. Psalms xxiii, xxiv, xxvii, xlii, Ixxxiv, ciii, and cxxi, Isaiah xl, and then the stories of Jacob, Joseph, 70 THE MINISTRY David, and all the rest of the immortal company in the Bible. But it is the life of Christ he must know — the plain New Testament story, without commentary or book of interpretation. He must know this first and last, and all the days between. It is the only religious reading in school days which a boy needs, for it is the best of all, and he can understand it. II IN COLLEGE In college the less a man thinks of the courses which will specifically fit him for the ministry, the better. What he needs is a broad general education which will fit him to be an intelligent companion for all sorts of people, a man who can sympathize with the best intellectual effort of all grades of society. For instance it would be ab- surd for him to take a course in Hebrew in college. If he is to study Hebrew, that belongs to his professional course in the theological school. So, too, he ought not to take a course in ecclesiastical history. He needs every day of the college years for THE PREPARATION 71 the general foundation of an educated man. There are courses, such as English writing, psychology, and sociology, which, while contributing to general culture, do have especial meaning for one later entering the ministry. Of these I shall speak presently. As college courses are now planned, there are varied groupings of courses by which a man may come to the day when he receives his degree, with some satisfaction in the knowledge he has gained. Because the ministry is set to bring the Gospel home to the hearts of the people through the life and teaching of qualified teachers, it is important to catch the power of great teachers so far as the student may come in contact with them. In every uni- versity, in most colleges, there are two or three pre-eminent men. They have some- thing more than knowledge of their subject. They do know exact facts, and can tell them; but to this dry accomplishment they add what we variously call ** magnetism," "personality," ''greatness." It is an inde- finable quality, but every alert young man feels it. A young man may not safely fasten upon one such teacher and straight- 72 THE MINISTRY way lose himself in him, satisfied to be his pale reflection, his tinkling echo. By fol- lowing In college two or three teachers of this caliber, the Impressionable youth may find his own soul taking on strength and beauty. Because his masters are strong and copies of no one, he must be strong, master of his own soul, a man preparing to be a guide and strength to others. The first thought in selecting college courses is to talk with upper classmen and recent graduates, and so discover who are the great teachers. One must acquire some measure of their power. Ordinarily the student will find that the man who in a masterful way gives himself to a subject of learning is teaching some- thing which the eager man will desire to know. Sometimes a university Is so fortu- nate as to have so many really distin- guished men as teachers that an under- graduate must decide which of the geniuses he may pass by in order to gain the inspira- tion of others. However this may be, there are certain courses which he will strive to include in his four years. I have already spoken of Latin and THE PREPARATION 73 Greek, and of one branch of natural sci- ence. I need say no more of the impor- tance of pursuing Latin and Greek in col- lege for the sake of general culture; but I do wish to add a few words about the im- portance of a stiff college course in some branch of natural science. Experience dem- onstrates that engineers, and other men strictly trained in science, are exact and precise in their use of words. Most men who must speak often — preachers, legis- lators, and others — tend to be diffuse. Sometimes they seem to have no thought whatever hidden away in a sea of words; at other times they exaggerate their feel- ings and emotions, or they distort the truth by overemphasis upon a tiny fragment. Men shrug their shoulders and whisper, "He is slopping over again"; or, "You can't depend on him." A preacher was once describing the merry song of a bird in the wet and crash of a thunder-storm, as an illustration of courage. He was drawing on his imagination — and igno- rance. Two ornithologists chanced to be in the congregation; one tapped the other's arm, saying, "John, Pll give ten thousand 74 THE MINISTRY dollars for that bird." The study of a natural science will be conducive to clear thinking, to a sharper value of its expres- sion, to an honest discrimination between what is known to the speaker and what is not known. The discipline of a scientific course in college will cultivate such con- ciseness and exactness as shall give to the listener to certain sermons, three or five years hence, an honorable attention and respect. Then the student should elect rigid courses in English writing. These are needed not so much to stimulate utterance as to train the mind to find the clearest words to express the truth. Serious boys thinking of the ministry are prone to have a disastrous facility together with a ten- dency to fine writing. Their emotions are deep. Under the encouragement of the English department they tell what they think; fortunately for them, clever men, not unsympathetic, reveal the much-ado- about-little which goes rolling on page after page. Once a college freshman wrote of his feelings when he heard a magnificent organ played by a famous musician. The revered teacher Wrote in red ink across its THE PREPARATION 75 cover: ''Fifty years ago this would have been called very beautiful. I don't like it." It was a disappointing day for the youth; but a day for which soon he was giving thanks. To learn early in college to write clear, direct, honest, forcible Eng- lish is a valuable asset for any future; it is particularly valuable for one whose future is the Christian ministry. Another department of learning which the college undergraduate should explore, at least for a short distance, is philosophy. I remember gratefully, in my own case, courses in Greek philosophy, ethics, Ger- man thought from Kant to Hegel, and Cosmology — chiefly a criticism of Herbert Spencer. My college happened to have a philosophical department rich at that time in truly great teachers. Much of the ground covered by philosophy in college is covered by theology in the divinity school; but it is covered in a distinctly different way. In college one is sitting beside men who are more apt to turn out to be bankers, merchants, writers, teachers, than clergymen. The student absorbs the lectures not consciously as a man soon to 76 THE MINISTRY be a theological student, but as a man among men. It is truth for truth's sake, and not for any ultimate use to which it may be put. Besides this, the teachers themselves would rarely qualify as teachers in any theological school, even if they were willing, to try. So long as there are people in the world whose doctrines do not tally with the accepted tenets of orthodox the- ology it is well that a young man, who must live and teach in a world where such leaders have enormous influence, should know what they teach. To respect their honesty, to become oneself a capable judge of evidence, of logic, of intuitive truth, to be so well taught that one is both free enough and wise enough to criticise the con- clusions of a learned man, that is the bene- fit of philosophy soundly taught in a credit- able university. It is quite true that some young men lose their balance, become either frightened chickens or cringing parrots; in the latter instance they are quite apt to go on asking themselves philosophical riddles to the end of their days, and never put their hands to any practical task. But the normal youth finds his mind, and some- THE PREPARATION ^^ times his soul, In these stiff courses of frank, unhampered thought. It would be strange if in early youth the person who is determined to go into the ministry did not enter a period of religious depression and intellectual doubt. Any one who has some knowledge of the Interior ex- perience of men who have become clergy- men is aware that the man who does not enter this period of testing is the exception. The time of doubt varies. It may be in school, in college, in the theological semi- nary, in the first parish, sometimes in the full tide of a man's power. If it Is early the student sometimes gives up his prep- aration for the ministry; if It is later, the clergyman sometimes gives up his parish and enters secular life. But the strongest men, sure of the faith within them, face the storm, conquer their fears and their doubts, and come forth to teach with a conviction which has been bought with a price; they are the inspiration of the world about them. Because this dreary and black day is most apt to come in college, I must speak of it here. The collegian ought to know that he is 78 THE MINISTRY not unfortunate if he feels the difficulties of faith in a world teeming with theories how best to explain the countless mysteries which human psychology and modern sci- ence have revealed. The university where scholarship is most unhampered may have influential scholars in professorial chairs who are indifferent to the doctrines of Christian- ity. They are rarely aggressively negative; they are usually only agnostic. If such people, with their commanding influence, are in the world — and they are — it is much better that they should be met in college than in any other place. For there they stand with others equally accredited to teach. And among the others are massive personalities, aglow with enthusiasm and well-reasoned knowledge, eager to bear wit- ness to the truth which the Christian Church has taught all down the centuries. When, therefore, a young man in college finds that some shining light in the college world reveals the barrenness of his convic- tions, he is not bound to fight his battle alone. It is only good intellectual fairness which would cause him to turn to the other strong men whom he respects and who may THE PREPARATION 79 fortify his wavering faith. Because he has seen the depths he may be the better able to scale the heights. When a young man was warned not to enter a certain univer- sity because the faith which his home had given him would be imperilled by the free- dom of utterance, Phillips Brooks wrote: ** There are young men there of every form of religious faith, and many who have no faith. There are scoffers, perhaps there are blasphemers. There are also earnest, noble, consecrated Christian men, and many souls seeking a light and truth which they have not yet found. You will meet in the college what you will meet in the world. You will have to choose what you will be, as you will have to choose all your life. You will find all the help which Christian friends and Christian services can give to a young man whose real reliance must be on God and his own soul." Bishop Brooks was thinking more especially of a man's fellow students, but the words would apply with equal force to a man's teachers. A graduate of the University of Wales told me that the most stimulating part of his undergraduate life was participation in 8o THE MINISTRY discussion classes (a method first introduced in German universities). Under the gui- dance of one of the professors a voluntary group (varying from twelve to fifty In num- ber, usually about twenty) would meet for informal discussion. The topics might be, for example, "William James's Theory of Emotions," or "Bradley's Appearance and Reality," or "Ethical Consciousness," or "The Development of Self." There was a good battle always; criticism was unembar- rassed; doubts were fearlessly uncovered; issues were boldly met. Men found their convictions, and were inspired. Men who take advanced courses in American univer- sities know something of this method in so- called seminars; but these are apt to be technical, and are always confined to men interested in one narrow field of research. To assemble students with varied points of view, to have the scientific student attack the student of metaphysics, and to have both send the fire of their scepticism into the faith of the student of a formal theology, is excellent discipline for every one, especially for the man who hopes later to preach the Gospel to thoughful men. THE PREPARATION 8i In general, then, the man looking for- ward to the ministry will spend his time in college acquiring what will make him an intelligent man among men. He must be sure to know something well. To be ver- satile, to be able to talk on many subjects, is not valuable, unless there be a foundation of true learning — one subject on which you may venture to talk with experts. But, granted that a man have some solid acquire- ment, there are certain branches of learning of which one may begin to know something in college with the hope of going farther in one's own private reading in after-years. Among the courses which one will decide to be necessary are certainly Latin, Greek, one branch of natural science, ethics, psy- chology, English writing, at least one mod- em language (French or German, according as one has learned one or other in school); and among the courses which one will choose, in addition, according to one's en- thusiasm and the power of those who teach them, will be courses in philosophy, in economics, a brief period of history inten- sively studied, some one of the fine arts, and the knowledge of some language in 82 THE MINISTRY order to study thoroughly some outstand- ing genius (for example, Italian, to intro- duce one to Dante). Four years are a short time, and one cannot wisely seize upon too many subjects. Mistakes are in- evitable. But if a college graduate really knows something, has a vision at least how wide and diverse is human knowledge, and, in the end, respects accuracy and truth, he has spent four years to marvellous ad- vantage. He is making a good journey towards the ministry of Him who called Himself Son of Man. Ill THE CHOICE OF A THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL In choosing a theological school many elements enter in. Convenience (either of neighborhood or of expense) ought not to be a deciding factor. A school which has even one really great and inspiring teacher upon its faculty is worth considering. Ed- wards Park at Andover, Alexander V. G. Allen at Cambridge, George Park Fisher at Yale, William Porcher du Bose at Sewanee, and Walter Rauschenbusch at Rochester, THE PREPARATION 83 were the magnets which drew keen-minded youth to their seminaries. To know any one of these men, as a pupil knows a friendly master, was in itself a liberal education. Much more than the information bearing upon an important course of study was acquired from them. They opened doors, whence men could look out into the wide reaches of learning and original thought. Even a rather stupid man caught a glimpse of what it was to be a Christian scholar. An indispensable element in the theo- logical school to be chosen is that its faculty surely know the past and the present knowl- edge which has been gathered within their respective departments. There are some men who know all that the Fathers of the first three centuries said about the Epistle to the Romans and the Fourth Gospel, but whose only acquaintance with later reflec- tion upon these books is the fugitive article in some half-popular magazine. There are others who know practically every modern ■ theory about the New Testament but who have no interest in any thought recorded before the year 1850. I do not know that in any seminary of theological learning 84 THE MINISTRY either of these defective classes of teachers is represented. But I have suspected it sometimes. If a wide-awake young man is going to study theology he must desire to sit under a teacher who is neither afraid nor indolent. Pitiful is the case of a man who goes placidly through his theological course, and five or ten years after his ordi- nation discovers that there was a Tubingen Hypothesis, or a man named Strauss, or another named Darwin. The seminary is the place in which to face squarely all the difficulties which beset inherited faith, and also to extract, from what at first seem difficulties, the genuine contribution towards a firmer and larger or- thodoxy. Bishop Wilberforce thought the doctrine of Evolution the thief which would steal away men's faith in God the Creator; the modern bishop, using the doctrine of Evolution to illustrate the ancient Chris- tian doctrine of design, sees in the continu- ous process of creation the indwelling Spirit of God. The Bishop of Natal, fifty years ago, believed that to question the tradition- ally received information about the authors and dates of the Old Testament would be THE PREPARATION 85 to endanger men's faith in the Bible. To- day every thoughtful leader in the Church Universal knows that the Bible is quite capable of protecting its own truth ; and the whiter the light which beats upon its pages, the more distinct will its divine message be. These are simple illustrations from com- paratively recent history to show how dan- gerous are those teachers who try to shut up the truth into their tiny systems. The only safe theological school is the school where the teachers care first of all for the truth from whatever source it may come, and whithersoever it may lead. The theological school is, first of all, a school of sound learning. But a school might be learned, and yet most inade- quately fit a man for the ministry. While, therefore, you are casting your eye over the theological seminaries, you need to ask whether the seminary you are inclined to select produces men who are enthusiastic in what, for want of a better term, we may call religion. The test which most con- cerned the anxious relative of the new dominie in The Bonnie Brier Bush, was that he should in his first sermon speak a 86 THE MINISTRY good word for Jesus Christ. It was the rehgion of the young man for which she was awaiting some infalHble sign. Rehgion is easily parodied. Philhps Brooks used to tell of his first evening at the theological seminary. He went to a prayer meeting, and was utterly discouraged because he felt that he never could rise to the exuberant piety of his classmates. The next morning, he told us, he was the only man in the class who had learned his lesson in New Testa- ment Greek. Religion must come to the surface, but what appears must be the real thing, and not a vapor, however richly colored. In a truly faithful theological school re- spect for sound learning and willingness to express religious enthusiasm must go side by side. To be merely exact and pains- taking leaves a man dry, cold, forbidding; to be merely exuberant leaves a man super- ficial, and therefore to the earnest inquirer utterly disappointing. If you find gradu- ates from the seminary you have almost chosen not only solid in their attainment but fervent in their devotion to the Lord Christ then you may clinch your decision. THE PREPARATION 87 That is a good school for you to choose. You may hope to grow in its halls into a serious and joyful messenger of the Master who said, " I am one that hath told you the truth." IV IN A THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL Once in a theological seminary, what may one expect? I suppose that most laymen imagine that a theological school is like a mausoleum — very dignified and proper, but so solemn as to verge upon despair. To those of us who have had the privilege of a really good theological school, the seminary is like a garden. It has no tomb-like walls. The garden is an old garden. Saints and scholars have walked there long years ago. Some of the trees are old, some were planted only this year. There are some picturesque ruins, but the new part of the palace is comfortable in the sunlight. And through the garden walk pleasant friends, all intent upon one thing — how to be messengers of that Radiant Person who walks in the gar- den in the cool of the day. There is play 88 THE MINISTRY and much laughter, as well as study and reverent worship. The fellowship is not only student with student, but it is often student with teacher. Quite often the best friend won in that varied garden is the learned master who at first seemed too far along the path for one to catch up with him to confer with him upon the things con- cerning the Kingdom of God. What I desire to make clear is that there is no more normal life than life in a theo- logical school. For many a man there have been no happier years than the three years spent there. Part of the happiness comes from the fact that all the tentative deci- sions of the past are fulfilled in the definite decision upon a life-work. The man is upon the final stretch of road which leads to his vocation. The possibilities of other roads are taken from his mind. His heart is fixed. Part of the joy is the discovery that the student's companions are all passing through the same exultant experience. In college some men were thinking how much money they could make as bankers, or how famous they might be as lawyers, or THE PREPARATION 89 what discovery they might make as physi- cians, or what invention they might pro- duce as engineers, and so on, almost indefi- nitely. These dreams and hopes were all good, some of course higher than others, but they were dissimilar, a mixture of al- truism and selfishness in varying degrees. Now, though the physical journey from college to seminary may have been only half a mile, the spiritual journey may have been the length of a universe. In the truly adequate seminary adequately furnished with students, the men will all have their faces in one direction. They are prepar- ing for a life which is to be for others, most of all for God and His Christ. Later they may become self-centred, conceited, sel- fishly ambitious, worldly. But they are now caught in a garden of beautiful ideals. And they are all looking the same way. I am not thinking merely of my own happy experience. I have heard the same testimony given by others, not now and then, but constantly. Very often I have known a man to hesitate in starting upon the theological course. Almost always I have known such hesitating men to say 90 THE MINISTRY within the first half-year: "I never sus- pected it would be like this ! It is glori- ous ! All the men have their faces in the same direction." And there with the proper reticence of youth they stop, but we, who remember, know that they all are looking to Christ, who is saying to them, as He has said to disciples all through the years, "Follow me." They are like the first joy- ful disciples walking with Jesus by the Sea of Galilee. They know at last what it is to be "called," not only one by one, but as a company. The modern theological school is offering varied courses. Thirty years ago and less, we all studied about the same courses. For example, though we might not lisp Hebrew in our sleep, we all learned pain- fully to read part of Genesis and a few Psalms, so that even yet we can under- stand a dictionary article which includes Hebrew words. Now, unless a man has a special bent for Hebrew or intends to teach it, he is not required to elect it. He is expected, if he be dispensed from Hebrew, to take some course equally strenuous. Whether a man acquire his knowledge of THE PREPARATION 91 the Old Testament through its ancient language or through easier devices, he must determine that while he is in the seminary he shall know the history, the traditions, the inspiration of the Old Testament, and the candid interpretation of it as modern scholarship understands it. No layman in his parish should know more of it than he does. The New Testament in Greek should be known thoroughly. The Gospels and the Epistle to the Romans should be known to the last iota. And a man should covet every atom of knowledge which has ever been won for the life of our Saviour. The ** Lives of Christ" should be studied, that one may know how that Life appeals to every temperament. Church history is next in importance. If taught by a master, it will be almost as the continuation of the New Testament. It will be God's leadership revealed in time. It will strengthen faith and give one the judgment whereby man's frailty may be separated from God's wisdom, and one will see where loyalty and service should be given. However faithfully in 92 THE MINISTRY college one may have studied any part of the last twenty centuries, the same period ought to be seen from the point of view of the Church. Theology is largely historical, and only by seeing its growth in the neces- sities of human experience can a man be- come fully aware of the inevitability of certain doctrines. There are truths which, lost or minimized in one age, reassert themselves again and again in succeeding ages; whereby the conclusion is reached that they are inalienable possessions of normal and rational humanity. The stu- dent who believes that, in spite of all hu- man currents, wilfully or unconsciously flowing against it, the purpose of God is majestically sweeping on through history, has a confidence in God which is close to the revelation of the divine in the Gospel of Christ. To find the Church expressing the deepest longings of the human heart is to discover that doctrines are not the cold, lifeless formulae men sometimes think them, but that they are the records of con- victions which the best people of their time felt and knew in their own experience. They become intimations of truth which THE PREPARATION 93 we ourselves, in a distant age, may verify in our present experience. Church history is a necessary part of every theological course. In addition to the discovery of doctrines revealed by the Holy Spirit in history, the theological student must seek the knowl- edge of theology, as one competent teacher will declare it to him. Every man who preaches the Gospel ought to have in the background of his preaching a consistent theory of life. This theory will not be ex- actly the system of theology which he learns from the doctor of divinity who lec- tures to him in the theological school. It will be influenced by that teaching, but, in so far as the master really informs his pupil, the pupil will learn that he must test the teaching by his own inner experience. He must in some way live what he tries to think. The experience of the youth is in- sufficient to grasp all at once what the master tells out of a mature and gracious experience. Therefore a good deal of the teaching must be stored in the memory against the day when the intricate demands of human life find in the memory the satis- faction of an adequate explanation. 94 THE MINISTRY The English theologian, the late Fred- erick Dennison Maurice, warned his disci- ples that they must beware of becoming slaves to a system. Every good teacher would echo this counsel. In the manifold mysteries of life, there are some things of which a thoughtful man is, in his own mind, entirely sure. He may not be able to con- vince other men by cogent reasons; his authority may be an intuition which is beyond need of proof, so far as he alone is concerned. He reaches his conclusions partly by reason, partly by what Josiah Royce used to call "appreciation"; how- ever won, these conclusions are, to him, solid ground. Beyond these fixed conclu- sions there is a vast area of thought where- in he holds his theories of life more or less as hypotheses. The fundamentals are few and substantial. The element of confes- sedly uncertain theories may be expected to diminish, as a man grows in experience; because the working hypothesis which he has adopted for this or that section of life becomes so satisfactory in meeting the vicissitudes of the years that he is content, for all practical purposes, to call them THE PREPARATION 95 proved. His system therefore grows as he himself grows, in knowledge, in grace, in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. The respected teacher of doctrine be- stows on his pupil a priceless gift when he lays before him the theology which he has proved to himself out of the history of thought, out of his own reflection, and out of his own daily life. The pupil sees what are the elder man's convictions. Like St. Paul, the master says, ''This have I re- ceived: of this I am sure." Like St. Paul, he says again, "Now see we through a glass darkly: of this I await the full knowl- edge." Under such inspiration the callow youth begins to build, fearlessly and hope- fully, his own theology. Its loyalty to the past includes the command that he prove all things to his own honesty. So, when the time comes for him to preach, he shall bring forth from his own mind doctrines which really belong to him; and men, look- ing into his clear eyes, shall say, ''That man believes with all his life what he utters with his lips." There may be young men who fancy that if they go to a theological school they 96 THE MINISTRY will be taught a hard-and-fast system of thought, which will be so precise that all they need do in the future is to repeat it, word for word, like the multiplication table. To the indolent and careless this may be a comforting expectation. To the conscien- tious and painstaking it will be a night- mare. The facts of Christianity are printed large on the page of history. The applica- tion and interpretation of those facts are, of necessity, as varied as human nature is varied. There is no greater doctrine than the doctrine of the Atonement; but this doctrine varies with the light which the Holy Spirit has revealed to saints and phil- osophers in succeeding periods. The dili- gent student receives help from all these thoughtful men in the past, in so far as he is able to study them, but his own doctrine cannot be a copy of any one of them. Through all of them the Spirit speaks to him, and then the Spirit of God tells him, as he awaits the sound of His Voice, the truth for him alone. Every earnest layman builds up his own theology, even though he might call him- self an unbeliever. It does not make much THE PREPARATION 97 difference to his neighbors if the layman is not able to tell his convictions ; but it makes a tremendous difference to the inquiring neighbors if a clergyman is not able, in some dire calamity which has fallen upon them, to assure them of an interpretation which is based on interior conviction as he has lived and thought it out in the light of his discipleship to Christ. Those neigh- bors will instantly know whether a clergy- man is irreverently rattling off platitudes which were sound doctrine for the man who taught them, but which have never be- come true doctrine to his own experience. They will know their man when he com- forts them with the assurance, ''Of these things I am sure.'* This man has deep within his life a reasonable faith. An essential part of a course in a theo- logical school is the technical preparation for preaching sermons. The essential prep- aration for preaching is all of a man's life. But unless a man can make himself clear and can make himself heard, he can- not help the people committed to his care. The structure of a sermon, its clearness, force, conciseness, are all of moment. Of 98 THE MINISTRY vital importance, too, is the training of the voice. Many able young men despise the teacher of elocution; his teaching seems to them artificial. No sane teacher of elocu- tion to-day seeks anything but the simplest art of speaking intelligently. There is something wrong either with the theological seminary or with the pupil graduating from it, when a man who has spent three years in it cannot make himself heard distinctly in every part of a church where the acous- tics are reasonably good. Besides this he should be able to read a chapter from the Bible without embarrassment, without stum- bling over a single word, and with such simple and direct intelligence that every man, woman, and child will be compelled to listen. If any youth thinks that this can be accomplished without training, let him go to some city rector, ask to read a chapter from the Bible to him in his church, and prove to the rector that he has uncon- sciously learned to do what ordinary mor- tals attain only with repeated effort. The best sermon ever written is a failure if the people lose half the words of which it is composed. There is a technique to every THE PREPARATION 99 profession as there is a technique to every art. The man who despises that technique is as great a fool as the farmer who believes the wheels of his wagon so well constructed that he refuses to grease them. The wise man respects every aid which will make the best that is within him effective in service to his neighbor. Joined closely to the training in the prep- aration and delivery of sermons and the conduct of divine worship, is what is com- monly called pastoral care. In one sense this can be learned only by experience. But the wise teacher may tell what he him- self has learned by experience in a parish. He may tell not only his successes but his failures. He may familiarize his pupils with the lives and guiding principles of great pastors. He may reveal the human soul in its need and perplexity, its sorrow and its moral failure, its recovery and its triumph. He may show how a man, set apart to the divine task, may help another man. There is much that no lips can teach; there is also much that can be im- parted. A certain amount of machinery must be in the life of the pastor; the move- loo THE MINISTRY ment of this machinery can be taught. The theological student will not despise this mechanical knowledge. Learning before- hand what can be taught by another, he will be the more apt and the more free to learn what only God can teach him when he comes face to face with the baffling mysteries of human life. If possible, a man, while in the theolog- ical school, should serve a little parish or mission in some capacity. He may not take much time from his studies; for study is now his chief duty. His ultimate useful- ness will be greater if only his Sundays are given to this practical service. He may teach in a Sunday-school; he may conduct divine worship ; he may either read another's sermons or, if permitted by authority, make his own addresses. In any case he will be coming in contact with people in some such fashion as he will meet them in his regular ministry; and so he will have a taste of what the work ahead is to be. The slight experience he can gain will open his mind towards the questions he may now ask his trusted instructors in the school. The work of the classroom will cease to be THE PREPARATION loi academic. He will begin to apply every- thing he learns to the needs which he has observed in his quasi parishioners. Such mission work has often been of dis- tinct advantage to a man. It has also at times been a man's undoing. Now and then a student feels that the parish or mis- sion he chances to serve is all in all, and the theological school is only a necessary nui- sance which conventional authorities require of him. He may become vain of his easy success. He may scorn hard work and de- cent preparation. He may give his eve- nings to pleasant visits, and so neglect his books; thus he may come to the day of his ordination with only superficial acquire- ment; the foundation may be so weak that no solid structure can be built upon it. Be- cause of such discouraging folly, many a theological professor has warned all stu- dents to decline invitations to pastoral ex- periment while the theological course is unfinished. Their warnings are valid; un- less a man can prove to them that he can keep his academic work up to its best, while making his first timid efforts to put his learning into practice. Keeping in mind 102 THE MINISTRY the risks, and seeking to reduce them to a minimum, every student of theology will endeavor to yield himself to a course in the practical work of a pastor in some small parish or mission. There is distinct ad- vantage for his training in this early taste of what is to come. In addition to these fundamental courses in a theological school are a number of courses from which one may rightly choose the course or courses which most appeal to one's enthusiasm and ability. Sociology is fast becoming a science. A great deal can be learned from the master of sociology. Though the Christian ministry is first of all interested in the subjects of the king- dom, yet through advancing the character and power of these subjects it must build up the kingdom as a whole. It may have no ambitious dream that it can in some way contrive a wholesale method by which the kingdom shall grow; yet, little by little, without observation, the leaven will spread till the whole is leavened. The Church needs to know all that the master of sociol- ogy can teach; sometimes to sympathize and appropriate the teaching; sometimes to THE PREPARATION 103 criticise it. Never let the social worker believe that the Christian pastor is not in- terested, and deeply interested, in the im- provement of the social organism. He is not content to see his poor parishioners ground down by unjust wages or by the tyranny of an unscrupulous union. He will fight in conjunction with every decent committee which pleads for liberty of chil- dren, when greedy employers or thoughtless parents would shut up their growing lives in cheap factories. But, while he is doing all this work for the mass of humanity he will know that his immediate duty must always be to John who is selfish, or to Mary who is oppressed, or to their child who is for- gotten. The golden age is coming only so far as the leaden people, by some heavenly alchemy, are being changed to gold — one by one. And that is the Christian miracle which the sociological pastor of Christ*s Church is bidden to perform. Music is of importance in the Church. For the most part laymen will be respon- sible for it. But some clergymen ought to be proficient in the knowledge of the his- tory of music, that what is best in all music 104 THE MINISTRY may be applied and adapted to the worship of the Church. As sociology should be co- ordinated with pastoral care, so music should be co-ordinated with the liturgical instinct of the Church. The clergyman need not be an organist or a choirmaster, but his knowledge how best to co-operate with an efficient organist and choirmaster will be of mutual advantage to the two men so co-operating, and to the Church as a whole. Whether or not a man is to be a teacher, the diligent student can scarcely fail to be interested in one of the departments of theological learning above all the rest. If he is curious about the difficult doctrines of the Church, let him take an advanced course on some specific truth such as the Atonement; or, if he longs to see more exactly into some period of history, let him take an advanced course, for instance, on the rise of Monasticism; or, if he is im- pressed with the futility of Sunday-schools, let him seek a course on scientific pedagogy. More and more the theological school is varying its curriculum. To the fundamen- tal requirements it is adding an inviting THE PREPARATION 105 array of elective courses from which the more eager spirits may test their capacity for original research. Thereby they have the chance to start upon some definite line of training; and then, being thus furnished, they may go on themselves to be creative leaders in a special field. Without neglect- ing the necessary duties of a clergyman, they will be authorities in certain depart- ments. The Church at large will look to them for counsel, for wisdom, for exact knowledge. So far from being a place where very dry professors teach very dry subjects, the modern theological school is a scene abound- ing in life. It is intent upon the truth as revealed to men down the ages in a con- tinuous stream of experience, as revealed to men in the movements of our own day, as revealed by the Holy Spirit to the devout individuals whom we know face to face. The modern theological school is seeking to know and to teach exactly the truth. But it is not content to keep the truth laid away in a napkin. The truth is to be carried out by its students into the life of the world. The truth is to be put to work. io6 inE MINISTRY It is not to be fought over, or to be gloried in, or to be hurled at the heretic. It is to be lived; and then it is to be so imparted that men will catch it, as children catch the measles, and they too will live it. For a university there is no better motto than Veritas; for a theological school that motto is insufficient; it must be Veritas et vita. If you have learned in the university to rev- erence truth, you will learn in the the- ological school to love it. You will desire to possess it, and then to transmit it as a living gift to the whole world. IN ALL EXPERIENCE Many valued clergymen have not been prepared for the ministry in a conventional way. They have started out to be business men, or lawyers, or physicians, or teachers, and then, at some stage in their preparation, or in some early stage of their active life, they have discovered that they were meant for the Christian ministry. Obviously they will not be expected to return to their early boyhood and begin again. With mature THE PREPARATION 107 minds they will add to what mental and spiritual possessions they now have the knowledge which the Church may see fit to demand of them as a requisite for ordina- tion. Often these men of irregular prepara- tion outstrip in usefulness those of us who have had a normal schooling for our work. Several principles become clear as we re- flect upon this interesting phenomenon. In the first place, character is so emi- nently the qualification of an effective minis- try that it is comparatively indifferent how that character is won. If a man cares so earnestly for exact knowledge and for his fellow men that he is willing to go through the dif^cult training of a medical school and the additional training of a hospital, he has the same qualities of industry and love to bring to the work of the ministry. If a man looks upon the law as the expression of justice and if he longs to know and practise it that he may bring justice to the tangled and crooked ways of humanity, rescuing the oppressed and branding the oppressor, he has equally valuable traits to bring to the Christian ministry. If a man has been scrupulous in business and sees that wealth io8 THE MINISTRY is only for the service of the world and knows that money is a possible symbol of a man's interest and conscience, then he can bring to the ministry the high integrity which not only means to be honest but is honest, which not only means to use every gift of the people to its utmost worth, but, by his economic knowledge, does so use it. If a man has experienced the joy of teach- ing, if he has discovered that he has the precious gift of getting ideas into the minds of youth so that they both understand and own them, if he finds that he desires to teach not only truth but living truth and so comes into the ministry, then every day of his teaching has accumulated power which now he is able to pour into his preaching and into every instruction and into every con- versation, however informal, whereby he is able to win man after man, woman after woman, child after child, to the shining truth in the face of Jesus Christ. His character as a sound teacher is used to the inestimable benefit of the ministry. A further principle is that the man trained from without the specific institutions pro- vided by the Church, often brings into the THE PREPARATION 109 ministry as a whole what the conventional parson never could bring to it. There are professional duties which every clergyman must do in the most careful way possible for him. But a good many clergymen do these professional duties in a professional way; they become so familiar that they be- come perfunctory. There is often a fresh- ness about the ministrations of a man who is not steeped in the theological atmosphere which brings to the congregation a sense of reality which is almost thrilling. Phillips Brooks once said to theological students, "Never get used to funerals." The law- yers, physicians, and teachers who come into the ministry show us what it is for a mature man to minister for the first time in the tenderest relations of pastor and peo- ple. They make us ask ourselves whether we may not have become too ''used to funerals" and other sacred moments of our ministry. Still a third principle coming out of this consideration is that there is no knowledge thoroughly acquired, no deed carefully done, which does not contribute to the efficiency of the ministry. If one has planted a field. no THE MINISTRY or tended sheep, or sailed a ship, or felled a tree, or built a house, or set the type of a book, one has in that experience a delicate tool wherewith to touch the sympathy and the affection of some man whom one de- sires with all one's heart and mind to reach. Not through the use of an illustration, not through the definite terms of a conversa- tion about farming, or grazing, or naviga- tion, or forestry, or carpentry, or printing, is this sympathy and love kindled; but through that more delicate understanding which is created by the brotherhood of those bound to the same craft. The Su- preme Example of the ministry was a car- penter. Who may say how subtly that fact subconsciously affected the simple folk to whom He spoke His words of life? The ministry, of all vocations, most graciously uses all that a man has acquired. All life is part of its preparation, so far as a man may win its experience. A necessary warning must be added. The knowledge must be real knowledge, whether gained by study or by experience; it may not be superficial or untested. The late Thomas March Clark, one of the most THE PREPARATION iii versatile and clever of men, relates that once when he was in London he thought to gain the attention of a congregation of dock laborers by illustrating his address with figures taken from ships and the sea. He made mistakes in terms, and immediately his hearers turned aside from all his teach- ing, because they knew that he was super- ficial and ignorant in their special depart- ment of knowledge. In ways less direct the expert detects and despises the ama- teur. If the ministry is to be helped by men from other walks in life these men must bring genuine experience, and there- fore exact knowledge. Then their contri- bution will be real, and their own ministry will be rich. VI THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY The general opportunity of one who en- ters the Christian ministry is to proclaim God's love for men and to bring men, so far as one can, into a worthy response to that divine friendship. This means that one must be not only religious, but actively religious. The ministry offers to a religious man the inestimable privilege of spending every hour of the day in the furtherance of true religion. The ways in which this general purpose may be accomplished are varied. As varied types of men may find in the ministry full scope for their particu- lar traits, so varied tasks await men who have especial aptitude for this or that func- tion of the ministry. It is well that a man see clearly, that he may work out the gen- eral and essential purpose of his vocation in somewhat narrow limits which bound a field where his toil will be intensely con- genial. 112 THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 113 PREACHER AND PASTOR Almost every man who goes into the ministry expects to be the shepherd of a flock; that is, to have charge of a parish. In large parishes some of the clergy will emphasize the preaching; and others will give most of their time to the care of indi- viduals in some form of pastoral relation- ship. But, even in this large field, where to a certain extent men will be specialists, the preacher will also, just in so far as his preaching is effective, be forced to be a pastor to those whom he has helped by his preaching; and the man who has helped people privately and personally will be pleaded with to utter his message in the pulpit. Of course in the average parishes over the broad land the office of preacher and the office of pastor must be combined. Whether necessity combine them or not, they ought to be combined. The greatest preacher whom our country has known de- clared that, if he could, he would drop everything but the pastoral duties of his 114 THE MINISTRY ministry; evidently not only did he feel himself most serviceable when he acted as pastor, but the inspiration of his whole ministry was kindled by that experience. We may believe that the searching qualities of his preaching came from the revelations which God gave him in his pastoral min- istrations. Above all, the Master who preached the Sermon on the Mount claimed for Himself the title, the Good Shepherd. A man looking forward to the ministry has a right to ask what would be expected of him if he should give himself to the paro- chial work of the Church. No explanation is adequate; as one cannot describe music, so one cannot describe the experience of a preacher and pastor. Only the man who has experienced the response which honest preaching and faithful shepherding receive, can know what it is to be either preacher or pastor. To preach is supremely hard. Because it makes severe demands upon a man's industry and a man's daily life, a man may rightly suspect that it is worth doing. The facile people who tell a story, quote a poem, and utter a few platitudes are not THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 115 preachers, however they may satisfy the pa- tient congregation. Real preaching comes up out of genuine study of God's ways in the Bible, in history, in the daily paper, in one's own experience, in the lives of one's flock; and one will not fear dulness if one may tell the truth. The dulness will be transfigured as the congregation see in the preacher's words the vision of what God is revealing to their own inner sight. No clever books of illustrations, no commen- taries framed for preachers, no pithy sum- maries, will suffice. There must be study of God's Word, study of men's thoughts, study of human life at our doors. Men to preach must work with all their might. The preachers who move men assure us that their task never becomes easy. "I sweat blood every time I preach," was the testimony of a modern preacher. And an- other has said, "After each sermon I think I never can preach again." These wit- nesses to the difficulty of preaching ought to stimulate us, not discourage us. The work of preaching is so hard that it inspires respect. A task worthy of all the capacity of a man, actually and potentially, is a ii6 THE MINISTRY task which a sturdy and venturesome man will desire to undertake. It calls upon him for all that is best in him; it will keep him at his best. Moreover, no preacher who is worthy of the name will have any other judge before the eyes of his imagination than the Lord God. A sane man will have due reverence for the word which God speaks to devout laymen in his parish. He will not be so self-centred as to believe that God reveals His truth exclusively to him. But when, after due consideration, he is sure that the truth which God has told him is certainly the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then he is bound to declare it whatever the unfavorable reaction of the congregation for the time being. In the long run no hon- orable congregation really desires to listen to a preacher who consults their prejudices, or preconceptions, or inadequate reason- ings. A layman of robust faith knows how little of the truth filters through the mind of a single child of God; he knows that his experience must be supplemented by that of others; and when the preacher who tries to know the experience of many THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 117 souls with whom he has fairly intimate association, tells what he has discovered, the layman expects him to say more than will be the mere reflection of his individual experience. If a preacher is the shepherd of his flock, if he is known to them as an honest man striving to obey God and God only, he receives surprising trust from his congregation. The opportunities for mar- tyrdom are not so numerous as the enthusi- ast often desires. Good men, after all, want a leader more than a reflector. They will shake their heads and disagree time and again. And they have a right to their private judgment; for often they know more, and have lived more deeply, than the preacher. But they would not darken his counsel with their own limited knowledge. They want him to speak out boldly the truth as he believes that he has received it from God. Here again is alluring inducement to be a preacher. The sneering comment of some that Christian preachers say only what they are paid to say, dies on lying lips. To stand up with the consciousness that one is saying in one*s heart the prefa- ii8 THE MINISTRY tory words, "Thus saith the Lord," sug- gests a startling responsibility for modesty, respect for others' convictions, and confi- dence towards God; and it gives a man at least a glimpse of what it is to be called to preach the Gospel. No king, no ruler of any sort, has so high a function as he. With the office of preacher is wrapped up the office of pastor. The two offices cannot be separated. The preaching will be interpreted and understood according as the man in the pew knows his dear friend who stands in the pulpit. For he does not know him chiefly in the pulpit. It was this preacher who came to him when his child was at the point of death; he prayed the prayers the poor anxious parents had not courage to pray. It was this preacher who went out to find the wayward boy, ex- plained the love of the father and the moth- er, and brought him home to their arms. It was this preacher who stayed the flagging spirits of the father of the house when he was called upon to pass through a galling fire of criticism, till his righteousness was made clear to the enemy. It was this preacher who came in the black hour of THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 119 bereavement, and by word and prayer brought into the darkness the Everlast- ing Light. The stranger marvels because this man's sermons are heard with a hush upon the whole congregation. The stranger little knows the excellent living quality which vibrates through all the simple sen- tences. The sheep belong to the shepherd: he knows his sheep and calls them by name. And the sheep know the shepherd's voice: they look up and they are fed. I once heard an English vicar complain that, though many people in the bounds of his parish did not come to his parish church, these same absentees expected him to bap- tize their children and to bury their dead, and he wished to be rid of them. It was the strange illustration of the conventional hardness which may spring up in a State Church. I believe that this lament is not characteristic of the English Church; but, in any case, one sees here the sign that a man with a noble privilege may fall under Christ's awful indictment : he is a thief and no shepherd. The Good Shepherd is al- ways going out for the one lost sheep, leav- ing, if need be, the ninety-and-nine which I20 THE MINISTRY are safe. The pastor whose preaching is the preaching of the Good Shepherd makes clear his longing to serve just as many souls as shall turn to him, whatever the emer- gency, however long their neglect of him and his ministrations. If a man becomes a real pastor in his community, his church will not hold all the people he visits, if by some miracle they all bethink them to come to divine service on a given Sunday morning. Some of these may be children of devout church- goers; they complain that they went to church too often in their youth, or they must take their own children to the coun- try, or churchgoing doesn't help them. Yet the pastor counts them of his flock. He remembers that subconsciously the rev- erence of their parents is in them; the time will come when the world will not satisfy. He knows that sickness, failure, sorrow will certainly visit them; and they will in agony cry out to God. Even if they deem a clergyman, and church, and baptisms and funerals outworn conventions, they will desire respect and order for their be- loved. If one comes in the bitter hour THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 121 who is a stranger, there is risk that the comfort will fall short. If one comes who is known to them as a faithful pastor, perhaps even a friend, his words will be weighted with the simple conviction that they are not perfunctory, but are spoken by one who truly cares. The strayed sheep knows the voice of the good shepherd. He is no stranger. They look up and are fed. Then there are the reliable parishioners in every parish who may be called the saints. The pastor knows that they are better than himself; he sits at their feet to learn. What need, he says to himself, have they of him ? A pastor has a duty to these; he stands in an official relationship. He is not simply himself; he is the embodiment of all the pastors whom the parish has had. In some way he is permitted to bring within himself, if he be loyal and self-forgetting, the pres- ence of the Good Shepherd, the Master of us all. He may tell of the work the parish and the Church at large are trying to do. Questions may be asked about parochial administration which cannot be answered in sermon or in year-book or in parish paper. To know that the pastor, old or 122 THE MINISTRY young, does not forget, that he longs to serve, that he has imagination to suspect loneliness, that he is glad to bring the Church to the parishioner, is to that faith- ful parishioner the assurance that the par- ish has personality and life. He will fre- quently provide opportunity that, when his parishioners would lift up their hearts, they may join him in the great Feast of the Lord's Supper, there to receive anew the conscious reality of a fellowship which binds them together in the living Christ. And, when by reason of age or infirmity, a par- ishioner cannot come to church, the pastor will administer the Sacrament in the home, that the pledges of God's love may reach the feeblest and the most unfortunate. Many a sick-room becomes glorious in the depth of the devotion of the two or three people gathered there: their hearts burn within them, their eyes are opened, and Christ is known of them in the breaking of the bread. Nor is the relationship of a good shep- herd to a flock more advantageous to the flock than to the pastor himself. When a rector had resigned one parish and had come THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 123 to another, he was visited by an attractive young college graduate who had an impor- tant position on a great daily newspaper. The journalist said: "Aren't you lonely? IVe been here a year in this cold New Eng- land city, and I haven't a friend." The clergyman replied: "I've been in this warm- hearted New England city less than a week, and my friends are so many that I can't count them. My parishioners had an old rector who was here for twenty-seven years. They loved him as their dear friend. They are good enough to begin with me where they left off with him. They take me for granted." No words can quite tell what the rela- tionship of a pastor is to his congregation. It is, at its best, something more than the relationship of friend to friend. There is ownership in it. It is akin to blood rela- tionship. If the pastor is old, like Doctor Lavender in Mrs. Deland's stories, he is as a father. If he is young, like the Dominie of Drumtochty, and the parishioner is old, he is like a son. If he is approximately the same age as the parishioner, he is as a brother, to protect one, to help one, to 124 THE MINISTRY share the burden as it falls. To little chil- dren he may stand with their parents as one of the guardians and lovers of their un- folding life. The ideal is always far ahead of the preacher and pastor. He is never properly satisfied with his work. But he knows that it is worth all the energy and devotion he can put into it. And he knows that the joy of it is beyond all reckoning. II A TEACHER OF THEOLOGY Long ago theological teachers in our schools were elected by benevolent laymen who sought for their beloved pastors some less strenuous career as they failed in strength. But now for many years our theological schools have been taught by men who have not been thus amiably chosen for the sake of the professors; they are taught by men who have been defi- nitely trained for the chairs to which they have been called. Occasionally men from parochial life with scholarly tastes have be- come teachers in our seminaries. But the THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 125 best men, as a rule, have been the teachers who from their own student days have de- termined to fit themselves to teach theology. Perhaps they have gone abroad to study in Oxford, Cambridge, Gottingen, or Berlin. Certainly they have kept up hard reading in their own chosen fields. The schools from which they have come have watched them while in some parochial experience they have sought contact with human life, and have summoned them at the first op- portunity to the teaching force of the schools. There is place in the ministry for the man who is not moved to be a preacher or a pastor, but who wishes to in- vestigate the foundations upon which our reasonable religious convictions rest and to impart the confidence which he acquires to others. The need for such a man is more evident to-day than ever before. When all branches of learning seek more thoroughly equipped teachers, theology shall not be re- moved from its place in the front lines. The approach to theological learning is clear. In college or in the theological school the student may find himself grow- ing more and more interested in one de- 126 THE MINISTRY partment or another. He may have the philosophic mind, whereby he may find his approach through the problems of theology. He may have the human instinct by which he recognizes that in no nation or peo- ple has God left himself without witness. Thereby he would approach his problem through a life study of comparative relig- ions. He may have that combination of reverence and critical freedom by which he will desire to spend his life upon the knowl- edge and interpretation of the Old Testa- ment or of the New. Still again, he may be so absorbed in the study of Church his- tory that he will seek to penetrate to all the knowledge which the sources can give him, and then he will desire to study the inter- pretation which historians have made to the well-attested facts. The student, convinced that he wishes to be a teacher, may feel no compulsion at the beginning of his course to select his depart- ment. That will come with a growing knowledge of what the various possibilities contain. A teacher of great learning and magnetism may inspire him. This teacher may become his master. Naturally his de- THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 127 partment will seem to him vastly impor- tant. Or, he may have native gifts which the faculty of the school will decide amount to genius; and the whole faculty will urge him to give himself to the cultivation of those gifts. Besides teaching, the man who becomes an expert in any branch of theological learning has the obligation laid upon him to write books. Our theological schools should be more amply manned, so that the professors should not find their strength completely used in the classroom. They should have leisure not only for indepen- dent research but for making, through books, permanent contributions to theo- logical learning. Too long America has depended upon English and other foreign scholars for its books of theology; or at least for too large a proportion of them. Each nation has qualities which make a medium for theological thought. Through this national medium, American theologians ought to be speaking to American scholars, and to other American people who, though not scholars, are thoughtful and willing to learn. The man who writes a book with 128 THE MINISTRY the individual reader in mind, who aims to clarify and enlarge his thought and to en- lighten his life, is close to the Good Shep- herd who is seeking the sheep gone astray. Just what department the enthusiast shall ultimately select is at first indifferent. The general foundation for the teacher must be laid broadly. He would wisely not begin to specialize too early. A teacher of the- ology must know the details of biblical criticism and interpretation. The teacher of Church history must know the terms and principles of philosophy, as history reveals the succession of theories and systems. The teacher who would interpret the his- tory of the Church must know well the his- tory of secular institutions and movements. Every branch of learning suffers from a too early and complete specialization; but prob- ably no branch of learning suffers so much as theological investigation. That which brings truth into human relationships must touch human thought and human life at just as many points as possible. As God touches life at every point, so to know God we must be conscious of the boundless life which is His. THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 129 III A MASTER IN A CHURCH SCHOOL FOR BOYS There are other specific functions that the ministry might cultivate, as institutions multiply which need in certain posts men who are not only trained in the specific sub- ject for which each institution stands, but are also trained in the duties of the Chris- tian ministry. In America, as in England, we know the value of a fully equipped clergyman at the head of a Church boarding-school (called in England a public school), and we know that there is great gain if some of the assis- tant masters also are clergymen. These schools have proved so potent in training robust and honorable manhood, that they will certainly be multiplied in the next few years. Thus far in this country too few of these schools have been sufficiently en- dowed; so that with rare exceptions, only the well-to-do can send their sons to them. Generous benefactors will doubtless make it possible for fees so to be reduced that able professional men (and other cultivated 130 THE MINISTRY people) with narrow incomes can send their boys to the best schools in the country. This means a significant opportunity for in- tensive training in the ministry, whereby we may look for distinguished schoolmas- ters who are also clergymen. How high this specific vocation within the ministry may and does become, one sees from these words which, in one of his books, Mr. Wells puts into the mouth of a schoolmaster: I have had dull boys and intractable boys, but nearly all have gone into the world gen- tlemen, broad-minded, good-mannered, under- standing and unselfish, masters of self, servants of man, because the whole scheme of their education has been to release them from base and narrow things. The earnest schoolmaster is always close to the ideals of the ministry. We find a fruitful life when the ideals of the two pro- fessions are fused In one man. We are beginning, in America, to have choristers' schools connected with the foun- dations of a few great parishes and one or two cathedrals. Occasionally a man with THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 131 ability in music is drawn towards the min- istry, but he is not sure that he could still use music as an avocation while being first of all a minister. It is quite likely that there will be an increasing demand for such enthusiasts in the ranks of the ministry, as existing choristers' schools expand and others are established. If it is desirable that the headmaster of a school like Groton, St. Paul's, or St. Marks be an executive clergyman, it may be that a headmaster who has the instinct of a pastor and such knowledge of music that he will intelli- gently co-operate with the organist and choirmaster, will be sought for our best schools for choristers. But such a man cannot be chosen in any haphazard fashion ; he must be a man first with the requisite enthusiasm, and then with the patience to equip himself for this difficult combination of duties. IV AN EXPERT IN SOCIAL AMELIORATION As youth feels the possibility of improv- ing social conditions, youth will desire to make the Church a servant to the oppressed 132 THE MINISTRY and forlorn. As the work of the Church grows more complex, the Church will desire to have within its ministry experts who can wisely and efficiently make the Church a servant to the many. There is room to- day for the expert in social amelioration in the leadership of the Church. In times of change and unrest two dan- gerous classes manifest themselves in the Church; the radical who talks wildly and with insufficient knowledge; and the selfish conservative who pleads that the old order be maintained at least till he dies. The clergyman who has merely a sympathetic interest in philanthropic problems is not sufficiently furnished with knowledge and experience to guide two such opposing groups as these. Laymen, of course, could do much to relieve the pressure. But in a department of the Church likely to become so compelling as this, there must also be leadership from the ministry which can in some gracious way relate this seemingly secular problem with the larger and more comprehensive plan of God's leadership of men through history, as patient men have been able to discover it. There must be THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 133 at least some clergymen who will know enough as experts to be respected both within and without the Church. Foreign peoples coming in large numbers to our shores often throw aside the religious sanctions which conventionally surrounded them in their old home. The Church in America in one or more of its Communions finds itself confronted with an insistent de- mand to serve this drifting multitude. To recognize valuable traits in the old life, to discern undesirable elements, to prepare both the new and the old neighbors for assimilation and fusion into a stronger American character — all this requires skill. Patient workers in our huge cities are gain- ing from experience a fund of knowledge which should not be locked up in one time or in one vicinity, but should be communi- cated to all others who are interested, that when the experts of this generation lay down their work, nothing be lost and a real advance be made. There is too much that is academic in all our social theories. The vital teaching must come from the intelligent workers among the people who have both minds 134 THE MINISTRY and hearts to interpret their years of ser- vice among the poor and among those who, out of a strange land, are finding their place in our American Republic, and in our na- tional Christianity. The theological stu- dent whose bent seems to be some form of sociology, will find that the Church has a welcome for his specific gifts. He will need courage with his sanity, and he will need sanity with his courage. He must know how to build up rather than tear down. He must bring God's children together rather than dig gulfs between them. He must add to his zeal patience, and to his patience love. Then he will be a prophet of the new social day, and all Christ's people will rejoice in him. He will even discover that the formal and indispensable outward acts of the Church express a social unity which is amazing. First, there is the submission of all classes of people to the cleansing and spiritualizing act of Baptism, whereby all are made members of one body; and then there is the daring simplicity of the supreme service of the Church, the Lord's Supper, whereby worship becomes an act of obedi- ence rather than a difficult intellectual THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 135 effort, and the high and the low, the wise and the untaught, equally and together re- ceive the elemental symbols instituted by Christ, and by faith are, through them, bound into a unity which claims Him as the ^ heart and soul, living and breathing through all their humanity. V AN ADMINISTRATOR In the Apostolic Church, the Apostles found themselves so far impeded in their original work by certain tasks of administra- tion that seven men were appointed to re- lieve them. The Church to-day is tending to create an order of administrators who will relieve the pastors, preachers, and teachers of the larger business problems of the Church. There is a tendency to ap- point many secretaries for Christian educa- tion, social service, and missionary work. At present the Church is more or less ham- pered by the lack of training in the many excellent men who are called to such posi- tions. Ordinarily the man who begins with a fund of sound common sense and devotion 136 THE MINISTRY is obliged to learn the details of his office by a tedious and expensive experience. Because some offices of administration have attached to them considerable honor, a student might naturally hesitate to an- nounce that he is setting out to be an ad- ministrator. But shyness of this com- mendable sort is not to be considered when the Church can point to administrator after administrator in its government who has ob- viously no gifts of administration and is too old or too complacent to learn them. Men who attempt to preside at meetings of busy men, often by irrelevant stories and scatter- ing comments so dissipate interest and so waste time that the trained business man despises the practical training which the Church gives its leaders. If any man desires to be an administrator he desires a post of usefulness in the Church. Whether his training bring him to conspicu- ous place or keep him tied to some obscure office, he may rejoice in the genuine service which he gives to Christian efficiency, and he may set free for preaching and teaching others in the ministry whose abundant gifts may then express themselves in the best THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 137 utterance and the best books of which they are capable. I spoke in a former chapter* of the prac- tical man who would like to come into the ministry, but who fears that his tempera- ment and ability are too prosaic. The Church needs him. The laymen might ask why a clergyman need be tangled in any administration whatever. Passing by all theories, we may observe that all through the history of the Church the clergy have been forced to exercise administration. The laity may in the future, to the benefit of the Church, take a much larger share in administration ; but the clergy will probably always be required to do a considerable portion of the administrative ecclesiastical offices. The clergyman who is thoroughly trained to administration knows how to use others advantageously for his own re- lief and for the higher efficiency of the work. The practical man may take cour- age and joyfully enter the ministry. * Page 48. 138 THE MINISTRY VI HOW TO FIND one's PLACE How then shall one find one's place? The only caution necessary is not to. worry. God, through a man's own enthusiasm and the special need revealed, will show His will for His servant. The one word of positive counsel necessary is to be confi- dent. The particular task which a man most desires to do is waiting for him within the variety and happiness of the Christian ministry. VII THE NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY A MAN wishing to make his life useful naturally asks if the profession which he is inclined to examine fills a genuine need in the life of his time. There is always a group here or there to contend that though there has been need of a specific class in the past, that need is no longer imperative. The Christian Scientist believes that the time for a physician is over. The Quaker would have the world get on without an ordained ministry. The anarchist strives to eliminate the professional legislator. Others believe higher education a menace to the life of the Spirit. Still others believe the professional lawyer a menace to the simple justice which in their enthusiasm they believe men unhampered by theories would attain. That the ministry and the visible Church 139 140 THE MINISTRY seem to certain critics outworn is not strange. These critics may be among the careless and indifferent; or they may be among the most earnest and devoted church- goers of our day. They may say that the ministry and the Church have not failed; they have succeeded only too well. They recall that in their youth religion was iso- lated; they found it in church on Sunday morning, or in a religious journal. Now they hear religious topics discussed in clubs, at dinners, in the military camp; they find in almost every magazine and weekly jour- nal sober and intelligent reflection upon religious and theological problems — and the people not only themselves read the arti- cles, but urge others to read them. These readers, say the critics, are the symbol of the penetration of the Church into all de- partments of life, whereby the Church as a separate institution becomes unnecessary. The critics hope that the Church will last through their day ; for they find it singularly comforting when depressed, exceptionally stimulating when hard tasks loom ahead of them, infinitely consoling in sorrow. Obviously no one would care to enter a NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 141 profession which was about to vanish from men's necessity. But these outside critics have insufficient evidence that the ministry is less needed to-day than in the past. No one can tell what the need of the ministry is except the man, who being in the minis- try, knows at first-hand what demands are made upon him. If he lives a life of lei- sure, with only himself to consider, very likely the world is about done with the ministry of his kind. But the typical repre- sentative of the ministry to-day has, as a plain matter of fact, so many demands upon him that he can do each day only part of the tasks which individuals or organizations, in a community or in a wider sphere, implore him to undertake. He goes to bed worried, not because he has worked hard, but because with all his activity he has accomplished only a fraction of the duties his willing mind, heart, and hands were appointed to do. This typical representative of the minis- try lives not only in great cities, but in small towns, and in the open country. The place where a man lives has little to do with the fulness of his time. If he has 142 THE MINISTRY ordinary ability, some vision, and a con- science, he will see anywhere more that ought to be done than his constant labor can perform. Of course the personal quali- ties of a man have a good deal to do with the requests which come to him for service. But a large part of the demand centres in the primary knowledge that he represents the Christian ministry; he is known to be a man who is set apart gladly to serve indi- viduals and causes chancing to be in need of help. That he happens to be an agreea- ble, level-headed, and energetic person illu- mines his office; but a layman with the same qualities would not be in equal de- mand. The man known by the community to be at their service for any help he can give is bound to have a place which no one else can fill. What then are the uses of the Christian ministry which are quite as insistently necessary now as in any of the last nine- teen centuries? NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 143 IN THE COMMUNITY James Russell Lowell once wrote: The worst kind of religion is no religion at all, and these men, living in ease and luxury, indulging themselves in the amusement of go- ing without a religion, may be thankful that they live in lands where the Gospel they neglect has tamed the beastliness and ferocity of the men who, but for Christianity, might long ago have eaten their carcasses like the South Sea Islanders, or cut off their heads, and tanned their hides, like the monsters of the French Revolution. When the microscopic search of scepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society, and has found a place on this planet ten miles square where a man may live in de- cency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted — a place where age is reverenced, infancy re- spected, manhood respected, womanhood hon- ored, and human life held in due regard, — when sceptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the Gospel has not 144 THE MINISTRY gone, and cleared the way and laid the founda- tions and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the sceptical literati to move thither and ventilate their views. So long as these men are dependent upon the re- ligion which they disregard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate a little before they seek to rob the Christian of his hope, and humanity of faith in that Saviour who alone has given to man that hope of life eternal which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom. This eloquent passage describes what many men would be glad to say If they could. In general no one would care to live in a com- munity where the ministry was not func- tioning. Let us see in some detail what are the ministerial duties which every normal community counts necessary for its life. The public worship of God affects many more than those who regularly share in it. Indeed it may be said to affect even those who never are seen inside a church door. To have some people who periodically join In public praise, In public prayer, and In listening to public religious Instruction Is NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 145 to give to any community a certain tone. People made conscious of God's presence, and then living through the week, con- sciously or subconsciously, in that presence, are as leaven. They communicate what they have received in ways which cannot be analyzed or described. They are the salt, the seasoning, of the community. They may or may not be the most con- spicuous leaders of the community. The general tone of the community always de- pends upon them. Non-churchgoers recog- nize it when they tell their children that they wish them to go to Sunday-school or to church. Wise mill-owners like to have churches near their mills, not because it makes the operatives content with unfair conditions or inadequate wages, but be- cause the operatives become better people, do better work, and make the whole neigh- borhood a better neighborhood. The tragic comedy of life is revealed when a man sees that public worship helps others and him- self neglects its opportunity. But his testi- mony is clear nevertheless. Probably few towns in a country nominally Christian have ever been founded where the founders 146 THE MINISTRY (however irreligious) have not planned to have at least one church with its regular worship. The conduct of public worship is only one of the functions of the ministry which the community finds practically necessary to its efficient being. More and more so- cial classes are evident. They no longer fret us when they mean certain distinctions in what we call social amenities. Because some people are considered eligible for this or that interesting home or club, does not bar the others from happiness. There are natural groups in every community where people find congenial companionship, and there is little to be gained by shuffling these groups together to make awkward situa- tions. But every community dreads lack of sympathy and co-operation in the vari- ous social strata of its life. When the people who work with their hands draw aside and send out ugly suspicions against those who work with their brains; or, when the people with much money fling angry words against the demands of those who have little; or when the people south of a given street show petty contempt for those NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 147 who live north of it — then those who care for the community have cause for mis- giving. The community is flimsy because it has divided intentions and divided affec- tions. There is only one profession or class in the community that can weld together these diverse elements. That profession or class is the Christian ministry. The ministry is pledged, by its Galilean King, at once the simplest and the most august of leaders, to be a member of every class. It enters every home with a sense of comrade- ship, ownership, almost relationship. It is unembarrassed in a palace, it finds no lack of welcome in the tiniest hut. In so far as the people feel their possession in the repre- sentative of the ministry, they possess one another. In times of suspicion, recrimina- tion, hate, is it not a high and necessary function that one profession should give itself to such amalgamating power, that the community should be, at least approxi- mately, a mutually loving family? When a house is known to be in distress, the neighbor sometimes fears to be accused of intrusion if a call is made and leading 148 THE MINISTRY questions are asked, most of all if help is volunteered. The solicitous neighbor comes to whisper his knowledge to one who repre- sents the ministry in the town. He, it is felt, can without offense, with every assur- ance of success play the friend in that luck- less household. By such an example we see that a normal community demands that its friendship be made so thorough that there be a profession within it devoted to the exercise of friendship. The ministry itself sometimes smiles at what it thinks the futility of pastoral calls. It speaks of leaving cards, and drinking tea, and wast- ing time. The community aware of its corporate life waxes glad when it sees the parson going up and down the steps of many houses of an afternoon. It knows that friendship is going in and out of the doors. Perhaps there is no one to receive him, and only a card will later tell the family that they are graciously remem- bered. Perhaps some member of the house will welcome the visitor, but the conversa- tion may be of only common things — a new picture, a new railway station, a country road. But friendship will have NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 149 been in that house; and in the evening word will be passed about that the parson called. He cares, every one thinks to him- self; we like him; he is our friend in being our pastor. Nor is the benefit ended with that pleasant and cordial feeling. Dark- ness may come down into that home. Anxiety, grievous illness, death may come. The family will want more than friendship, and that something more they will want in a friend. And they have a friend. He knows where they live. He comes to see them. He cares very much. Now they know instinctively that he will care more than ever. Before they have a chance to tell him, he is at the door. He is asking if he may come in. Perhaps they have not been in church for years. Perhaps they have outwardly given his work no support. He seems not to remember it. He is theirs, and they are his. All he says, all he does, is radiant with that assurance. He is the friend of the community — of every member of it for whom directly or indirectly he may claim responsibility. Never allow any flip- pant person to tell you that parish calls are a nuisance, that they are superfluous. 150 THE MINISTRY They are often the threshold over which Christ steps to give strength and courage to His afflicted brothers. The community is not content to allow the ministry to be absorbed within paro- chial limits. The public schools, the hospi- tals, the library, the local government, all claim his interest. Whether or not he is officially associated with these institutions, his interest and influence are sought. His knowledge, his point of view, his intimacy with many people affected make his judg- ment so valuable that the wise leader counts it essential. By no accident, but by real service, the man who has exercised his ministry in a community for twenty years or so is almost invariably the leading citizen. Other men, good and true, stand about him, but the community does not see how he could be spared. Him, or some- body like him, the community must have in the ranks of the Christian ministry. NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 151 II IN THE NATION During the war with Germany the min- istry had a chance to see what the national government thought of its usefulness. No effort to move public opinion failed to in- clude an appeal to the ministry to use its unique influence. When the Red Cross needed strong hands to help, when the Liberty Loan needed trustful investors, when the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion needed funds for its benevolent work, when the homes whence soldiers were drafted needed encouragement and consola- tion, the ministry was begged to help. The Nation asked it. Partly the reason why the ministry was effective in these appeals which, bidden by the government, it gladly made, is that the ministry was recognized to be an indepen- dent force, following scrupulously its con- science. In America there is a free Church in a free State. The Church is in no way subsidized. Though an institution within the State, its allegiance is ultimately to 152 THE MINISTRY God, and to God only. The State is there- fore not calling upon a vassal to repeat its commands; it is seeking the endorsement of an institution which while devoutly loyal to the Nation is, as a prophet, telling the Nation what is for its best and truest life. In easy times the Nation may not think overmuch of the Church's judgments; but when the great crisis comes, when the peo- ple must make sacrifice with righteousness, the Nation must have the confirmation of its decrees. They must be certified that they are after the will of God as those who deUberately try to know His will can con- fidently affirm. What is plain to all in time of crisis, is clear to the wise at all times. The Nation is always in peril if it lose its integrity, its honor. When politicians make statecraft a byword and an hissing, when youth play fast and loose with moral sanctions, when narrow groups insist on rule or ruin, then the Nation cries out to the Church to save it. The Nation knows what happened to Assyria, to Greece, to Rome, to Spain. If the ministry be a feeble folk, the Nation would do everything to make the ministry NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 153 stronger. It wants men like Francis, and Wesley, and Brooks. It wants them in great buildings before vast congregations. It wants their words to be with power. It would have them wake the sleeping, arouse the indifferent, convict the selfish and the wicked, reform wild youth, frighten the complacent, reinforce the brave, the honor- able. While we think of great names in the past we know that the bulk of the work has always been done by — The unknown good . . . that did their deed And scorned to blot it with a name. Great names will adorn the ministry of the future as they have glorified the ministry of the past. But a ministry exalted in ob- scure comers of the Nation, doing faithfully its unknown, but difficult and necessary work, will be the real power which as leaven will leaven the whole people, and which as salt will purify the whole Nation. If you love your country, you will readily imagine how necessary is the Christian min- istry not only to its better life, but to its 154 THE MINISTRY survival. A nation can endure only so long as it knows its responsibility to God. And that body of men which keeps the Nation thus mindful is the profession which the Nation in its sanest moments must know to be most necessary of all. Ill IN WORLD RELATIONSHIPS The people in our day are not more anx- ious about the Nation than they are about the civilization of the whole world. Hav- ing shared the sacrifice and the sorrow of a world war, we are convinced that if civiliza- tion apart from America proves unequal to the strain now being put upon it, our own dear country must be swallowed up in the universal crash. Any one who diligently examines history will know how inevitable it is that the Church and its ministry must go on. When Rome fell in 410, what had seemed eternal met destruction, but the great man of his age, stunned by the failure of the City of Man wrote an immortal book on the City of God. Again and again the wise NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 155 of the earth have prophesied the end of the Church, but it has always come out of the blackness to proclaim the Light of the World. Its Founder foretold that it could not be destroyed, and every imaginable emergency has tested His pledge. By the most assuring evidence we may trust God to use the Church always to revive the dy- ing world. The ministry accordingly has more than a local, more than a national necessity. Men of high personal probity have been knaves in the Nation; men scrupulous in national honor have been base in dealings with for- eign nations. Selfishness, trickery, mur- der, stain international relationships up to our own age. In so far as the ministry of the Church is true to its Master, the most stinging rebuke must be given to such per- fidy. As we are all children of God, what- ever the variety of our nationality, w^e are necessarily brethren, with the divine com- mand upon us, "Love one another." The selfish and provincial statesman is just to his countrymen, a thief and a murderer to the inconvenient foreigner. It is the Church alone which, as an institution, brings such 156 THE MINISTRY a degenerate to his senses. The most hope- less moment in the history of Germany was when the clergy gave their sanction to the invasion of Belgium, the destruction of innocent French non-combatants, and the sinking of ships going upon their unwarlike and legitimate errands. The most encour- aging moment for any nation is when the clergy of that particular country rise up as one man (not by common agreement but spontaneously, each directed by the voice of God) to compel the government to deal justly with all men however distant in space and tradition. The inevitable interest which an earnest ministry must have in foreign missions is a safeguard to an honorable international respect. Almost every minister has a dear friend who is in the native ministry of Japan; another who, though an Anglo- Saxon, is giving his whole life to a great district in China. Should relationships be- tween America on the one hand and China or Japan on the other become strained, it is unthinkable that Christian men bound to- gether by the intimate ties of friendship should not have vast powers of reconcilia- NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 157 tion, just in so far as the missionary work has been effective. We have reason to be- lieve that among the very best, if not the very best men of both China and Japan are Christians, taught by missionaries, educated in our Christian colleges. These men are leaders and more and more will be leaders. They will see America through those Amer- icans who cared enough to become exiles from beloved homes in order to tell them of Christ, in order to live and die for them in Christ's Name. And a great company of our best countrymen will see China and Japan through these Japanese and Chinese Christians. The world, even though it may not see the chief boon which Christianity has bestowed, will come to see that Chris- tianity already tends to save men from in- ternational fraud and hate, and may be counted on at last to make secure interna- tional justice. In any case, however iri- descent this dream seem to the sceptic, there is no other institution but the Church of Christ which can pretend to hope to accomplish so arduous a task. The world of responsible statesmen so far as they can be imagined as coming to- 158 THE MINISTRY gether to work for the benefit of the whole civilization of the earth must, if they think their task through, long to see the Christian Church attain some form of unity which shall leave the individual free to follow his conscience and yet unite the Christian men of all the nations into one willing brother- hood, intent upon seeing in one another the face of the loving Christ. If such unity might come to the Church, if such deep- seated trust and understanding could be given to those who now work in separate camps, the force of the Church as a benef- icent agency in the world would be mani- fold what it is to-day. This force would not come as a master (as in the Mediaeval Church), but as a loving servant (as in the Primitive Church, when Christ knelt to wash His disciples' feet, and when Peter and John said: "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee. . . . Rise up and walk"). The Church has far to go. Its history Is only beginning. It has had amazing vic- tories and heart-rending defeats. It has had false, greedy unities and hateful separ- ations, but it is potentially the salvation of NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 159 the world. More and more, if the best men in the world will give their genius, their in- tegrity, and their devotion to the ministry, the Church will bring the nations into a joyful unity where each shall strive for the good of all, and all shall pour the blessings of their strength into the feeble and the discouraged. There are some men with large enough vision to long for the salvation of the world. That salvation, accomplished once for all in the sacrificial love of Christ, shall be realized through the patient and loving efforts of a consistent Christian ministry. Lift up your heads, humble ministers of Christ ; you have the supreme task among the tasks revealed to men ! VIII THE COMPENSATIONS OF THE MINISTRY I ENOUGH TO LIVE UPON A MAN entering any vocation has a right to ask whether he can support himself and his family on the salary which he is likely to receive. If a man feels himself really called to a vocation, the enthusiasm of his assur- ance that God has designed him for that niche in life, will carry him far beyond any such consideration as the means of liveli- hood. But he must ask the question at last, and he has a right to ask it. If you have the ambition to be rich, you can entertain no thought that the ministry will by any chance lead to wealth. Even the largest salaries paid to the most con- spicuous ministers of America must seem insignificant to the men of the same effi- i6o COMPENSATIONS i6i ciency in medicine and the law; and to the men of the same caliber in business they must seem ridiculously meagre as the re- ward of a year's hard work. At the be- ginning, therefore, one must see that the recompense of the ministry is not in money. The question then comes, "Will the or- dinary man be able to live upon what is given to average ability ? " Often the extra- ordinary man is in a place which can sup- port only a man of average ability; but most men rightly put themselves modestly among the average class. A good many things need to be said about this. In gen- eral, I am inclined to believe that the men who have difficulty in supporting their families are not more in the ministry than in the law, medicine, teaching, or business. One reason why we observe failure of support in the ministry is because the men who give up the ministry to find what they think more nearly adequate support else- where are thereby marked. A man is sup- posed to stay in the ministry after he enters it. I know a great many men outside the ministry who try one task after another, and no one thinks much about it. Because i62 THE MINISTRY they move from the law or medicine into business, no one cries out that the law or medicine does not support lawyers or phy- sicians. It does not support one particu- lar lawyer, or one particular physician ; that is all. So you must not think that because a minister you know has gone into business the ministry therefore does not support the clergy. Most men get on very comfort- ably; and their homes are apt to be in bet- ter taste, essentially more comfortable, than nine-tenths of the homes in their commu- nity, village, or city. The homes of people who have no more than the parson and his wife are sometimes confused and soiled. The homes of those who have more are sometimes vulgar in their display, either re- vealing the so-called taste of an interior decorator or no taste at all. Money can- not of itself make either beauty or comfort. That something which the parson and his wife are apt to have, can, with a little money, make both comfort and beauty. The salaries of the clergy are much better than they have been, and they are con- stantly increasing, under the leadership of certain wise counsellors blessed with imag- COMPENSATIONS 163 ination, who know that the minds of the clergy must be emancipated from fretting cares if they are to do their best work. So pension funds have been established in several Communions, and a man's old age is provided for if he lives; his widow and children are provided for if he dies. The salaries at the beginning of a man's minis- try are somewhat larger than his brother could expect from fees in his early practice of law or medicine. And enough men are aroused to the need of supplying adequate salaries to make it certain that no one really need hesitate to enter the ministry for eco- nomic reasons. We must frankly admit that the ministry, like teaching, is scandalously underpaid, when we consider the benefit which these vocations bestow upon the community. A man must find In the min- istry such enticing compensation In Its work that he Is content to overlook Its limited compensation In money. At the same time he may believe that the salaries of the clergy will be more nearly adequate within the next few years. Meantime, men who have found It neces- sary to economize at every turn of their i64 THE MINISTRY ministry, have found a certain satisfaction in its suggestion of sacrifice. When a par- son in a pleasant New England village or in the outskirts of a Western city thinks of his classmate who has gone to China or India, a willing exile from his dearest friends and relatives, he is glad that he has some share In the heroic aspect of the ministry. He would be ashamed to have his ministry at home too comfortable. Moreover, the devout and serious think- ing characteristic of the parsonage or rec- tory, combined with its plain living, has made the best background for the training of children. Any one who has not hitherto made the investigation, will be astonished to discover how large is the proportion of distinguished leaders in public life whose fathers were ministers. The refinement and cultivation, unhampered by idleness, undue pleasure, and luxury, have made great men. One begins to revise one's notions of the qualities and quantities which make the most desirable environment for a growing family. As the ministry becomes more prosperous in a worldly way — as it will become — we must beware of the risk men- COMPENSATIONS 165 tioned by the Psalmist, "He gave them their desire: and sent leanness withal Into their soul." In the past, meagre surround- ings have allowed a first place to joyful sacrifice and a devout spirit of unselfish service. Whatever hardship there was, has been transcended by the discovery and the winning of the best values in life. II THE JOY OF ADVENTURE When a war comes, youth are aroused by the beckoning of a gallant and unselfish adventure. But In days of peace the field of adventure Is limited. One of the fields of adventure always open for the daringly unselfish is the Christian ministry. The ministry offers to-day almost as great a risk as it offered in the seventeenth century, when the brave Jesuit priests pushed through the American forests to preach Christ to the hunters and the fishermen. Arctic cold and tropic heat cannot frighten men who hear the cry to help to the uttermost the men of Alaska, the men of Central Africa, and of other difficult regions of the earth. i66 THE MINISTRY The Christian missionary goes to his field so blithely that most of us little suspect his sense of sacrifice. A friend who had planned all through his college and semi- nary days to go to China was on fire with enthusiasm to be away, and at work in his chosen field. He went off with banners fly- ing. But he told me that when he said good-bye at Vancouver to his mother and his sister, knowing that not for seven years (If at all) would he see them again, his heart was near breaking. He transcended his homesickness by the glory of his mis- sion, but his heroism was at least as real as that of any soldier going off to the wars. Less than twenty years ago a clergy- man in a Texan city, with reputation as a preacher, with a prosperous and affection- ate parish behind him, deliberately left the prospect of a pleasant career and offered himself for work in Alaska. I chanced to spend several weeks in the s^me inn with him, in the Canadian Rockies, as he made his way northward. He had never climbed a high mountain, but he was thinking of the heights of Alaska, which he meant to scale. He had bought an aneroid, and he had pos- COMPENSATIONS 167 sessed himself of other equipment useful for a mountain climber. After he had been at Lake Louise a few days, he formed a party and, with two Swiss guides, he climbed the most hazardous peak in the vicinity. Mount Victoria. It was a rash feat for one so little tried in the art of climbing, but he achieved his ambition for that stage of his journey, and soon he was on his way to the coast to go on board the Alaskan steamer. The story of Hudson Stuck is known by every one who is interested in mountain climbing and in Christian missions. He achieved the summit of Mount Denali, and he made even more venturesome jour- neys through summer floods and winter snows to minister to scattered people. He brought them joy and diversion, he brought them also goodness and peace. The out- side world admired him; the people of Alaska loved him. It was the spirit of adventure which lured him on to be a notable missionary, for ever to be remem- bered in the annals of the Christian Church. When we think of the thousands of men who voluntarily exile themselves to build up the frontiers of the Kingdom of God, we i68 THE MINISTRY have a new respect for the ministry. It is not the soft thing many a facile talker thinks it. It is beset with hardness and peril, and it is crowded with the love which allows nothing to come between it and Christ. Incidentally, a minister who watches his brother go off to the edges of our own country and to the foreign lands beyond the seas is grateful that there are difficul- ties at home. He is glad if he must spend many years in the dense noise of the city or the loneliness of the country, with a salary which requires circumspection in its spending, that he may be able to count himself at least of the same devoted band as his fellows who have gone into the utter- most parts of the earth. Youth, at its best, does not want money or ease ; it craves adventure. And the ministry offers it in glittering abundance. Ill THE LOVE OF HUMANITY In America, we have a rough division of life into (i) country, (2) town, and (3) city. Speaking arbitrarily, we may define rural COMPENSATIONS 169 life as life on isolated farms, plantations, and ranches; or in communities of less than two thousand people; town life, as life in communities of from two thousand to twenty thousand people ; and all the charac- teristics of city life we may ascribe to com- munities of more than twenty thousand people. Let us ask what are the compensa- tions of the ministry in these various con- ditions in our own land; and then let us turn to the compensations which may be found in a ministry in a foreign field. IN THE COUNTRY We need to know again the opportunity of a ministry in the country. We often say that in England the opportunity is proved by the fame won by Richard Hooker while he was Rector of Bishopthorpe, by George Herbert while he was Rector of Bemerton, by John Keble while he was Rector of Hurs- ley, by Richard Church while he was Rec- tor of Whatley, and by Charles Kingsley while he was Rector of Eversley. They wrote village sermons which are classics; I70 THE MINISTRY and they also used their leisure to write books, which make their names illustrious wherever English is spoken. The ministry of great city churches and cathedrals, of dioceses and provinces, is largely forgotten, v/hile gratitude still goes out to these rural parsons. In our own day England sets us an example of courage in the country min- istry. To-day In America the man whose life is confined to a rural ministry through many years is apt to feel aggrieved. He thinks himself neglected, unappreciated, and then, if he persists in this mood, he rusts out, and he mourns that he has failed. There are, of course, notable exceptions to-day; and in the past we find most distinguished min- istries in the country. Let me give one example. The Reverend Jared Eliot (the son of John Eliot, "the Apostle to the In- dians") was graduated from Yale in 1706. For three years he taught school. In 1709 he settled down to a pastorate of fifty-four years in the village of Killingworth, Con- necticut — that is, he stayed happily and contentedly in this rural parish till he died. He introduced the mulberry-tree into Con- COMPENSATIONS 171 necticut and wrote an essay on the silk- worm. He wrote the first American book on Agriculture, and was elected a member of the Royal Society of London. All these books and enthusiasms were his avocations, his pastimes. His real work was his village ministry which brought him both satisfac- tion and fame, for his printed sermons are still to be found in Connecticut libraries. He was not only the most loved man in Killingworth, but he was, by his sympa- thies and industry, a man valued by all the country around him and by learned men across the sea. America was not always afraid of the rural ministry. It knew how to use its wisdom and its leisure to high and varied purposes within the largeness of the Kingdom of God. There are to-day men who are joyfully giving their whole lives to the rural min- istry. One man, of whom I think, was forced by frail health to work in the coun- try. With the ability which could have directed a metropolitan parish, he is serving a small congregation on Sunday, and is serving the whole neighborhood through the week. He has brought his imagination and 172 THE MINISTRY genius into the drabness of the village and its surrounding farms. Unheard-of things are being done. Like the country doctor, in Balzac's story, he is reconstructing the community. Beginning with material im- provement, he has passed to the mental sphere, and now to the heights of the spirit. He is reading and thinking and writing ; but most of all, by God's help, he is creating in flesh and blood a miniature kingdom of heaven. For a short time I had some experience of the rural ministry. I shall never forget the joy of mounting my horse, and going over the country roads to see my scattered parishioners. One old saint I remember in particular. He had all his life been a gen- tleman, and he had always been a farmer. He could not often come to church, and I therefore would ask him before going from his house, if he would like to have prayers. "Yes, very much,*' he would answer; "but excuse me for a moment." Whereupon he would disappear, to return wearing a black frock coat, thus showing his respect for the act of worship. I went away thinking of many things, knowing myself to have been COMPENSATIONS 173 in a most reverent sense in God*s presence. A little farther on I came to a man who lived alone with his daughter. He gave me a picture of St. Alban's Abbey, and he told me stories of his boyhood in the old town. I knew that the picture was one of his most prized treasures, but I knew also that I must take it. The small photograph is near me as I write, and it tells me of a lov- ing confidence which belongs to the open sky and the friendship of a good and simple man. On those rides down the open road, I talked of trees and crops and grim acci- dents; but I was learning deep lessons from people who lived day by day in the air and the sunshine and the fragrant rain. There ought to be men who in the theo- logical school will see the vision of the com- pensations of the rural ministry and delib- erately fit themselves for it. While in the seminary they might wisely take courses in a neighboring agricultural college, thereby fitting themselves for the specific conditions of country life. Men of wealth who are drawn to country life, and yet want to serve in some high way, might give them- selves to such a ministry among the farms. 174 THE MINISTRY Outwardly they would be that combination of squire and parson which is called in England a squarson; inwardly, they would be the redeeming leaders of the vast country life of America which to-day, as never be- fore, awaits leadership. In the rural ministry there is possibly a great opportunity for the whole Nation. One of the wisest men I know said to me recently that the leadership of America was stale, because it was confined at present to the voices in the great cities. He lamented that the voices most often heard were sub- ject to panic and fear and selfishness; and resented any real reflection, any considera- tion of change or possible improvement. Then he added that we could not hope for a really sane leadership till men ceased to herd together in cities and betook them- selves to the open country, there to find freedom and judgment, and in the conscious presence of God to think the problems of the Nation and the world through to their divine solution. Is that not an alluring pic- ture? Would you not like to go forth into the open spaces, with enough men to serve, to love, and to be loved by, and yet with COMPENSATIONS 175 leisure enough to think, and then, when the fire burns, to speak out, and to be perhaps safe leaders of men everywhere? Several years ago I chanced to be spend- ing the summer in a mountain village. There was one church serving the whole community, which numbered only a few hundred people. The pastor had grown old in his modest charge. The people who augmented his flock in the summer seemed quite as appreciative of his ministrations as the people who lived there through the year. Among these summer visitors was a university professor who each year spent a month in an inn hard by. He was used to the voices of the most distinguished reli- gious leaders in this country and England ; yet he said that if he needed spiritual help in any considerable crisis he would turn to the pastor of this village church. Some way he felt that this man who knew a few souls thoroughly and who was not jostled by the thronging and noisy duties of the city had come to more intimate knowledge of God and man than the preachers he was accustomed to hear in the university centre. The compensations of the rural ministry 176 THE MINISTRY are radiant. Who will earn them in the years just before us ? 6 IN THE TOWN Then there is the ministry in the town. There is a unique friendliness in a place which is large enough to have varieties of people and interests, yet not too large to allow every one to know every one else. Not only the parson's parishioners, but all the others are the parson's friends. To the being who loves his fellow man it is cheer- ing to meet at every turn people whom he knows and cares for. The town becomes a larger family. The fussy person may com- plain that his neighbors are overinterested in his affairs, that his plans are discussed before he has fixed upon them, that his idiosyncrasies are the topic of many a tea- table, that the color of his house and the shape of his hat are matters of vivid interest to his aunt's most intimate friends. Most qualities have their defects, and it would not be strange if the friendliness of a town had certain inconveniences. But these are COMPENSATIONS 177 trifling when you contemplate the human- ness of the interest. The parson is not living among mere houses and shops and streets, but among people. And the people are neither wax nor stone, but flesh and blood, who recognize in you a fellow mortal, in whom they claim kinship because you and they live in the same town. And the parson has more of the friendship than any one else, because he is the parson. If the parson is ill, the children come on tiptoe to his door and bring him wild flowers which they have gathered; a gruff old man brings a witty book; and the whole town does not allow itself to go to sleep till it knows each day how the parson is gaining. If blinding sorrow comes, and one thinks that love has died out of the universe, friend after friend comes with token or with word to assure the broken heart that God's love is yet the supreme fact in the world. A hush descends upon the very streets when deep sorrow comes to a dear neighbor in the town. This pervasive friendship gives to the parson a peculiar influence. Because his days are not crowded with routine he may 178 THE MINISTRY seize various opportunities for leadership which his neighbors plead with him to as- sume. He may guide the reading, through suggesting fine books for the public library; he may organize a society for the architec- tural improvement of the business streets; he may deftly suggest how a shrub here, a tree there, a bit of open grass, a bed of gay flowers, may transform into beauty the monotonous streets, where the houses are; he may found a hospital; he may quicken a right public opinion for sound local gov- ernment, and he may persuade the busiest and most honorable of his parishioners to offer themselves for public office. Every one who knows such a parson is apt to point with pride to his commanding position, showing that he is the most use- ful man and the most loved man within many miles. I remember a parson in a town of about ten thousand people who quietly reported that he had seen a candi- date for the State governorship drunken, that he had heard him use grossly profane language; he said, therefore, that such a man ought not to be governor of his State. The candidate wrote an overbearing letter COMPENSATIONS 179 commanding denial. The parson Instantly replied that, so far from recanting, he would gladly give. If he wished, full Information, the hotel, the day, and the hour. The story spread over the State, which was saved thereby the calamity of having such a governor. His defeat was thought im- possible, because he represented the domi- nant party, and his opponent was practi- cally unknown. I had a ministry of eleven happy years in a town of about seven thousand people. I have not seen it for fourteen years, but I think I could go to every door-step where my dear parishioners and friends lived, and if they are still living where they then lived, I could see again all the joys and sorrows which I lived out with them, and I could begin where I left them one November day many years ago, and speak of those they loved, of the teacher who taught their chil- dren, of the lame man who made most ex- cellent jests and smiled through the pain, of the professor of theology who scolded first and then gave a genial affection to his younger friends, of the old lady with a little dog who lived in a vine-covered cottage and i8o THE MINISTRY spoke with charm of noble men and women whom she had known more or less inti- mately through her four-score years, of a distinguished bishop who for forty years had been the father of the town. And how the children of that town stand forth in my memory ! There was the boy who swore at the curate, whom I afterward reproached with his backsliding, who went away without a word, but who (I found the next morning) had late at night put a tear- stained unsigned paper under my door, say- ing, 'Til never do it again.'* [It was the best anonymous letter I ever received.] There was the very young child who shook his fist out of the window, upon being told that God made it rain, the form of prayer used being, "I want you to stop." [Be- ginning there, I was requested to give an infallible rule for making children reverent as well as prayerful.] I remember the small girl who was so generous that when her father forbade her putting more money in her missionary mite-box, sought the house of her aunt, and put all of her living into her cousin's box. "Papa," she said with a sigh, "didn't tell me I couldn't put money COMPENSATIONS i8i into Robbie's box/' [How those children did give to missions !] I remember the boy who startled his mother's caller by making deafening crashes over the drawing-room. When his mother, having said good-bye to the somewhat stately new acquaintance, went to the door of the up-stairs room, she found the boy trying to put his rocking- horse on two chairs, each time failing with the loud drop of the beast. When asked what he was doing, he replied, "Oh, I was trying to put the ass into the pinnace.'* [He had been reading The Swiss Family Robinson : very intelligent children I had in my parish.] To think of such experiences is to know that there was something eternal in the rela- tionship of pastor and flock in that blessed town. I never can forget those people; I hope that at least some of them will always remember me. One has no longing to be gone from such a ministry ; one would cheer- fully stay all one's days within it. For it is friendly; it is home. { i82 THE MINISTRY IN THE CITY The response which the ministry receives in the city is not essentially different from the response which it receives in the village and the town. Human needs are the same everywhere. The man who gives his life for others will always receive the love which loving service commands. Its expression may vary: the reality will be the same. The city parish is apt to differ from the country parish by having in it people more or less of the same kind. If the parish is on the East Side of New York, it will be made up almost exclusively of very poor people. If it is in a section where prosper- ous people live, the pews will be filled with people who seem (at least to the stranger) to be very prosperous. Of course every parish has its rich and its poor, but the pro- portion varies. The most satisfactory par- ish is the parish which lovingly ministers to all sorts of people. To the outsider the city seems hard and cold. He pities the country parson who COMPENSATIONS 183 moves from a small town to a great city. He suspects that the parson will be shiver- ing in his loneliness, hemmed in by a wait- ing conventionality. I shall never forget how, in one such transition, a very old and very noble city parishioner wrote to her new rector whom she had barely seen, "I have known and loved three rectors of this parish; and I am ready to give my love to their successor." And that letter was not isolated. It was a sample from a general response which but deepened through the years. Because people seem to have every earth- ly wish satisfied, because they have houses and lands, pictures and jewels, and perhaps great place through inheritance or genius, therefore the stupid believe that they desire nothing from any one. It is the tragedy of such lives that their friends are often few and these few feel that there is nothing which they can bestow upon such super- abundance. So at Christmas there is for them slight symbol of the love in which they are held. We are strangely slow in learning the human heart. The demands of human life are elemental. The power to i84 THE MINISTRY buy material things does not include the power to be possessed of the intangible real- ities such as joy and respect and honor and genuine love. If these priceless possessions are won they are won exactly as the poorest win them. And so, passing by all other means of happiness, we know that the rich man quite as the poor man is glad to have a true friend in his pastor to whom he can turn in days of darkness or of doubt, and be assured that the call from the depths will be answered. You cannot be Doctor Lavender all at once, but it is astonishing what trust people who have much either in character or in possessions will give to Doctor Lavenders in the making. The late Franklin Spencer Spalding was known chiefly as the courageous bishop of Utah, but he had first a remarkable pastorate in a city. The small son of one of his well-to- do parishioners one day asked his mother what little boys did who had no fathers and mothers. Then he answered the question himself: "I know — they have Christ — and Mr. Spalding.** What a vision this child gives us into the value which one family put upon a minister's friendship ! COMPENSATIONS 185 The inexperienced are apt to doubt also the response of the other extreme in the life of the city — the parish made up of the very poor. One wonders if the bitterness of poverty or the interest in loaves and fishes may not build a wall which keeps out friendship. You have but to go into a parish in the densely crowded portion of a great city to discover what the parson is to his poor parishioners. He goes to see them; but they more frequently come to see him. The parish house is the radiant part of their home. The friends who mean most in their lives they meet there. And at the head is the good pastor; their eyes follow him as he moves to and fro, and the unmistakable glance of ownership and love tells the stranger what he is to them. One knows instantly how great a vocation that man has chosen. To mean so much as that to people who need friendship at its best is beyond all outward comfort and sue- , cess. Let me quote again Edward Lincoln At-^ kinson, who gave most of his short minis- try to the poor in the South End of Boston. He presents to us vivid testimony concern- i86 THE MINISTRY ing the response of what is commonly called a mission parish: This parish grows more and more to be part of me, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I am getting to be loved in spite of my short- comings. The personal element has grown. I mean I have the shepherd's feeling as regards the individuals of my flock. "The deaths ye have died I have watched beside, And the lives ye have lived are mine. ' * They are especially my people. It is really blessed comfort, after you have been loving the world in the abstract so long, to be able to love and to be loved concretely — to think that peo- ple come to you for this and that because you are you, and you are therefore something par- ticular to them. The real joy of the ministry has come to be mine. If you suspect that a parish of very poor people would not do much for their minis- ter, you have only to read the following paragraph from the same man's life: One day one of his Brotherhood men met him leaving a market with a leg of lamb which he COMPENSATIONS 187 was taking to a poor family. The man, know- ing in some way how Atkinson was being forced to take his luncheons in very cheap places, up- braided him for giving everything away. "Sup- pose you break down — you will have nothing to keep you," the man cried. Atkinson looked him straight in the eye: "Robert," he said, "if I needed anything, and went to your door for it, would you refuse me ? " "Of course not," was the quick answer. "Well," said Atkinson, "every one in my parish would do for me in the same way." The calls upon a city clergyman are be- wildering. He must keep strict guard over the hours for study and meditation, else his time will be absorbed in an endless succes- sion of meetings, public dinners, and civic speeches. What may be his destruction is also his opportunity. The city to-day, so far from disregarding the ministry, does practically nothing without seeking its co- operation. That co-operation, wisely given, may be a tremendous help both to the min- istry and to the city. It must not be a co-operation which seeks applause, which stands to shout when the multitude, or the dominant group within the city, cries out i88 THE MINISTRY its shibboleths. The ministry ought to be counted upon for the more thoughtful word, for the less popular utterance, perhaps for the warning and the rebuke. He is not the most useful minister who can always be counted upon to blow the coals of public passion into a flame. His office is inde- pendent of the immediate issue. He ought to see the principles within the issue which will meet the demands of an ending ap- proved by God. Gladiatorial combats continued in Rome until a monk named Telemachus jumped into the arena and the horror of his sacrifice ended the disgrace. I have wondered if in our own day and land the Bolshevistic method of intercepting the process of the law, called lynching, might not abruptly end if a neighboring parson should invite himself to such a scene and utter his indig- nant protest to the mob, and so wound their fury as to be himself lynched. I can imagine that his heroism would achieve a permanent victory for regular and orderly government. This is a type of leadership which the city needs. COMPENSATIONS 189 IN THE MISSION FIELD If you wish to know what is the response to the work of a Christian missionary you can do nothing better than read St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians. You will dis- cover there not only his affection for his Philippian parishioners, but also, quite as clearly, their affection for him. Your im- agination will open, and you will picture to yourselves how any one must feel towards the man who first told him of Christ and His love, and then by his daily deeds showed forth the life of his Master. The annals of missionary heroes are filled with the revela- tion of fidelity and devotion which converts have shown to their benefactors. If one would have a life not only of heroic adven- ture but also of the richest compensation in love, one could do no better than equip oneself for the mission field, and then take ship for a far-away land. Sir W. Mackworth Young, late Lieuten- ant-Governor of the Punjab, thus bears his testimony to the response which a fine 190 THE MINISTRY type of Christian missionary may expect to win: As a business man speaking to business men, I am prepared to say that the work which has been done by missionary agency in India ex- ceeds in importance all that has been done (and much has been done) by the British Govern- ment in India since its beginning. Let me take the province which I know best. I ask myself what has been the most potent influence which has been working among the people since annexation fifty-four years ago, and to that question I feel there is but one answer — Chris- tianity, as set forth in the lives and teaching of Christian missionaries. The Punjab bears on its historical roll the names of many Christian statesmen who have honored God by their lives and endeared themselves to the people by their faithful work; but I venture to say that if they could speak to us from the great unseen, there is not one of them who would not pro- claim that the work done by men like French, Clark, Newton, and Forman, who went in and out among the people for a whole generation or more, and who preached by their lives the nobility of self-sacrifice, and the lesson of love to God and man, is a higher and nobler work, and more far-reaching in its consequences. COMPENSATIONS 191 If you would know the thrill which comes to a victorious missionary, imagine Tucker, in his church at Uganda, filled with seven thousand black people, standing not far from the spot where only a generation be- fore Hannington had been murdered. It is said by those who have been present at one of these services that the most convincing plea they have ever heard for Christianity was the Apostles' Creed as this great throng proclaimed it. Results are not often so striking. Gen- erally the finest work is accomplished by deep-laid foundations, and the superstruc- ture does not appear for many years. But occasionally the response is immediate. The Reverend Arthur J. Brown describes dramatically such an instance of quick re- sponse : Two missionaries went to a village in Korea in which the Gospel had never been preached. It was noised abroad that they had come, and practically the whole population gathered. The interest was so great that the meeting continued until a late hour. Finally, the missionaries pleaded weariness after a hard day's journey, and were shown into an adjoining room for the 192 THE MINISTRY night. But the people did not go away, and the murmuring of their voices kept the mission- aries from sleeping. About two o'clock one of them went out and said almost impatiently: **Why don't you go home and go to sleep? It is very late, and we are tired." The head man of the village aswered: "How can we sleep? You have told us that the Supreme Power is not an evil spirit trying to injure us, but a loving God, who gave His only Begotten Son for our salvation, and that if we will turn from our sins and trust in Him, we shall have deliverance from our fears, guidance in our perplexities, comfort in our sorrows, and a life for ever with Him. How can we sleep after a message like this?" How could they indeed ! And the missionaries, forgetting their weariness, sat down by those poor people and communed with them until the morning dawned. When I was a theological student, I re- member asking a Japanese classmate if he would tell me how he was converted to Christianity. He said that he grew up in a little Japanese village, but, having in his heart an ambition to enter public life, he went to Tokyo. There he learned at once that he must be taught English. He wan- dered one day into a mission school, asking COMPENSATIONS 193 if he could be taught the chief language of the West. One day a New Testament in Japanese was put into his hands. He opened it casually; it caught his attention; he read more and more eagerly; without pausing to eat or sleep, he read it through; then turning back to the beginning he read it through again. He was a man of singu- lar concentration. He told me that, for the time, the outside world was blotted out. He saw Jesus only. He went to the teacher who had been especially kind to him, plead- ing: ^'Tell me of this Jesus. He is the Master I have sought all my life. This is the day for which I have lived." Then he poured out to me his gratitude for the man who had brought him to Christ; and I won- dered if, in the days to come, any man would be as grateful to me as my Japanese friend was to the far-away missionary who had been given the great opportunity of teaching and living Christ in a foreign land. In speaking of the mission field abroad, one cannot forget the mission field at home. As the edges of our country fill up, the terri- tory which may be called in any sense mis- 194 THE MINISTRY sionary, decreases. The picturesque con- ditions of forty or fifty years ago tend to change into the normal life of the whole Nation. But there are still counties in im- mense States which are only sparsely set- tled. There is still the tendency, when a family or an individual migrates from a Pennsylvania town to a mining-camp in the Rocky Mountains, to leave behind the con- ventions and sanctions of religion. In the struggle for life, or in the fascination of making money fast, the Church is nearly forgotten, and, for the time being, ignored. So there must be missionaries at home. The young minister is sent to some Western State, and is given a jurisdiction which covers, let us say, four hundred square miles. In the settlements of this region he holds services in rotation. And, as he can, he goes to scattered ranches, gathering for a service the family and the men who work on the ranch if they are willing, baptizing children if it is desired, showing friendship always. Thereby, when sorrow comes to that ranch, every one wants the missionary, if he can possibly come, that his word may bring hope and peace to the sorrowing, and COMPENSATIONS 195 that he may commit to God's keeping the soul which has passed. This missionary experience is outwardly hard. It means separation from kinsfolk and friends of long standing. It means far journeys, and little in the way of statistics to astonish the Church at large. But it also means the sense that one is bringing Christ to men and women who have no other chance to hear the Gospel than he and pos- sibly some other wandering missionary now and then can bring to them. There will almost invariably be respect; sometimes overwhelming gratitude. Those who have longed to hear the old words spoken will feel that heaven has touched the earth again, and some who have not understood will see the Light for the first time. In the annals of a missionary on our Western plains there is this story : I baptized a litde girl in a small town on the border of the Indian Territory. Her father was a cattleman. It would be no extravagance to say that the "cattle upon a thousand hills" were his, if it were not for the fact that there were no hills on his mighty ranch. Each cat- 196 THE MINISTRY tie-owner In that country has a different brand with which his cattle are marked, and by which he identifies them wlien the great "round-ups" occur. The "mavericks" — young cattle born on the ranch which have not been marked — belong to the first man who can get his brand- ing-iron on them. I could only make that town on a week-day, and arrangements had been made for the bap- tism in the morning. The child, about six years of age, had just started to the public school, and she had to remain away from one session for the baptism. In our service we sign those who are baptized with the sign of the cross. When she returned to school, the chil- dren pressed her with hard questions, desiring to know what that man with the "nightgown" on had done to her, and if she was now any dif- ferent from what she was before. She tried to tell them that she had been made "a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven," but did not very well succeed in expressing the situa- tion; so they gathered about her with the un- conscious cruelty of children, and pushed her over against the theological wall, so the speak. Finally, when she had exhausted every other effort, she turned on them, her eyes flashing through her tears. "Well," she said, lapsing COMPENSATIONS 197 into the vernacular, "I will tell you. I was a little maverick before, and the man put Jesus' brand on my forehead, and when He sees me running wild on the prairie, He will know that I am His little girl." IV THE LOVE OF GOD Sometimes the aged layman will confess to his young friend, who is making up his mind upon his vocation, **If I had my life to live over, I should enter the Christian ministry/* That is an eloquent confession. It sets the young man thinking. He won- ders what he will say when his active work is over, in case he elects this profession or that form of business. There will be then, he reflects, only one Voice whose approba- tion he covets, and that is the Voice of the Most High. We imagine that, in all humil- ity, Pasteur the scientist must have been conscious of God*s approval; and likewise John Bright the statesman, Walter Scott the writer, and Dante the poet. All these men had a sense of vocation, and could not help knowing at the last that they had 198 THE MINISTRY God's authoritative commendation. But it seems as if to the Christian minister who has Hved finely and unselfishly there must come a more nearly invariable sense of God's approval. The world has been thrust into the background. The things which are eternal have been chosen for the chief em- phasis. In spite of all misgiving, in spite of all littleness and narrowness, in spite of all failure and sin, there has been, by God's mercy, an always increasing desire to serve men in the highest and deepest parts of human life, to kneel down, as the Master knelt, and wash the disciples' feet, to ascend the mountain as the Lord went up, and to catch, with the other disciples, the glory which God reveals to reverent and patient spirits. A ministry faithfully served among men, far or near, in country or in city, rich or poor, learned or ignorant, wise or foolish, may be counted upon to bring to a man that most indestructible gift, the conscious- ness of the love of God. Date Due ^.', .J . i^ %q '4 7 .n>?v ^ o'irr APK .. i:. . ^