I BV 660 .R3 Ray, Jefferson Davis The highest office I 860 ! 1 VMMPVKfWWPIIfaP wm Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/highestofficestuOOrayj The Highest Office { i * 1 I I i I 1 t ■i k / The Highest Office A Study of the Aims and Claims of the Christian Ministry JEFF D. RAY Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology in the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary^ Fort Worthy Texas New York Fleming H. London Chicago Revell Company Edinburgh AND Copyright, I923, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street To those noble comrades The Faculty and Students of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary^ whose confide7ice^ affection and fellowship are prized among lifd s most priceless jewels ^ this volume is lovingly dedicated by The Author A Word Extenuative D RYDEN said, “ It is not my intention to make an apology for my poem. Some will think it needs no excuse and others will receive none.’’ But lawyers have what they call “ the plea of confession and avoidance ” in which the defendant admits the act with which he is charged but gives reasons why he should not suf¬ fer its penalty. For perpetrating this volume upon an innocent and unsuspecting public this mitigative plea is here and now made and is based upon the following statement of facts: So far as I am aware four things have prompted the publication of this book. (1) That invisible microbe that inspires every theological professor with the desire to perpetrate a book. (2) Most of the chapters in this book have been delivered in various conferences and conventions, and on all such occasions there has been a general and appar¬ ently sincere request for their publication. (3) A publisher while not insistent that they “ would fill a long-felt want ” admits that he could print them without fear of imprisonment or bankruptcy. (4) The feeling, I hope modestly cherished, that long experience in the pastorate and more than a decade of teaching pastoral theology in a seminary 7 8 A WOED EXTENUATIVE has qualified me to say a helpful word to some of my younger brethren. My devout prayer is that the suggestions herein made may help to save a young brother here and there from the mistakes that have marred my own ministry and hearten him with the things that have encouraged and helped me. There is no conscious plagiarism in this book but there is certainly nothing original nor even new in it. All it contains I have either read or heard or observed or experienced. Grateful acknowledgment is made of the help derived from the writings of Herrick Johnson, J. M. Hoppin, C. E. Jefferson, and above all from the personal teaching and influence of B. H. Car- roll. It is unblushingly confessed that if there are worth-while thoughts in the book they have prob¬ ably been derived directly or indirectly from one or the other of these noble men, or from other good men of whom they are a worthy type. J. D. R. Seminary Hill, Port Worth, Tex, Contents I. The Basis OF THE Office . . . ii II. The Titles of the Office . . 25 III. The Titles of the Office {Continued) 44 IV. The Call to the Office ... 65 V. The Permanence of the Office . 84 VI. The Maintenance of the Office . 100 VII. Some Qualifications for the Office —Physical and Mental . .127 VIII. Some Qualifications for the Office —Moral and Spiritual . . 142 IX. Some Modern Demands OF the Office 168 X. The Non-Official Functions of the Office.203 XI. Some Lowering Shadows of the Office.225 XII. Some Insidious Snares of the Office 239 XIII. Some Glorious Rewards of the Office .256 XIV. The Bishop-Coadjutor of the Office 272 9 I THE BASIS OF THE OFFICE How shall they hear without a preacher? —Romans 10 : 14 . E very office in a well-ordered government has its justifying psychological basis. One of the abuses of government is that the people are often confused with many useless offices and burdened with the support of a horde of un¬ necessary officials that have persisted for genera¬ tions after the justifying psychological basis has ceased to exist. There was a time when England was governed by a king. For generations, how¬ ever, she has had a government of the people and by the people. And yet the office of king has per¬ sisted and its figurehead incumbent continues to speak with Don Quixotic bombast of my army ” and “ my navy and my subjects.^^ Even in our own more modern government there is a constant tendency to perpetuate obsolete offices and appoint and pay men to perform antiquated official func¬ tions “ more honoured in the breach than in the observance.’* We come, to discuss an office that has persisted in its present form and under its present titles for II 12 THE HIGHEST OFFICE nineteen centuries. Was there ever a good and sufficient reason for the institution of this office? Or, granting that it was once a useful and neces¬ sary office, has it outlived its usefulness ? Has the twentieth century incumbent of the pastoral office become a religious figurehead, or does he fill an important, vital, practical and necessary place? Is the preacher a mechanically animated skeleton brought over from the shades of the first century and thrust into the arena of twentieth century ac¬ tivities in which he plays no vital part ? Or is the preacher of to-day a virile force, an essential fac¬ tor in moulding the modern social mind and direct¬ ing modern activities? A little careful thinking will compel an affirmative answer to the last ques¬ tion. An observant, unbiased, thoughtful man must see that the pastoral office is not a sinecure position to which men are arbitrarily appointed, but that it is one that has its solid, justifying basis in the very nature of things. Let us consider some proofs of this proposition. To begin with, then, we find adequate justification for the pastoral office in a universal need for it. Paul clearly teaches that the gospel preacher is directly and specifically set apart to his office by the sovereign will of God. But he guards against the inference that the institution of this office and the calling of men to fill it was an arbitrary act of God. He teaches, rather, that the office was cre¬ ated and men called into it in answer to an inher- THE BASIS 13 ent, essential and universal need of the human heart. In Acts 17 : 26 - 27 , he says: “And he made of one blood every nation of man to dwell in all the face of the earth, having before determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitations; that they should seek God if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.’^ This language clearly implies that the universal man—the man of every nation—^has a capacity an^a heart hunger for God; and that the universalWan instinctively “ feels after God.” But the language distinctly in¬ timates that this unaided intuitive struggle after God will probably be in vain. His expression “ if haply ” more than suggests that if these untaught seekers find God it will be an accident. The mean¬ ing of his expression “ feeling after God ” is not illustrated by the germinating seed that unerringly feels out through the dull clod for light and air.’ It answers rather to the figure of a blindfolded child aimlessly beating the air in a confused and vain search for its playmate. Paul points out the same universal need when he inquires (Rom. 10 : 14 ), “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher ? ” The thought is that though man may have a zeal for God (Rom. 10: 2), he will not come into saving relation to God unless there shall 14 THE HIGHEST OFFICE be sent to him a preacher—a man appointed and qualified to interpret divine things. This idea is strengthened if we remember that the word here translated “ preacher has in it etymologically the idea of a herald especially qualified and formally appointed. When standing on the western shore of Asia, Paul saw a man on the eastern shore of Europe beckoning to him for help, he witnessed a whole continent’s mute confession that, while men every¬ where feel after God they cannot find Him unless some qualified teacher ‘‘ come over and help ” them. Later, while standing in Athens, the very heart of human culture, Paul saw an altar to an un¬ known God,” he saw further proof of the twofold proposition that the highest human culture hungers for God, and that, unaided by a God-appointed preacher, the highest human culture cannot find Him. The same truth was emphasized when the Ethi¬ opian treasurer admitted to Philip on the Gaza road that he could not understand the spiritual meaning of God’s word without a qualified teacher. “ Understandest thou what thou readest ? ” How can I except some man (some qualified man) teach me ? ” Job was speaking the universal human language when he said, “ Surely I would speak to the Al¬ mighty and I desire to reason with him ” (Job 13 : 3 ). THE BASIS 15 The Samaritan woman (John 4: 25) was inter¬ preting to Jesus the world’s heart hunger and ear¬ nest expectation and conscious need when she said to Him, “ I know that the Messiah cometh, and when he is come he will teach us all things.” Socrates, a heathen philosopher whose utterances sometimes almost seem inspired, felt the need of such a divinely appointed and divinely qualified teacher, and not only foretold his coming, but begged his disciples to hear him v(h^ he came. A Vedic poet voiced his heart search for the altar stairs leading up to the divine footstool in the line, ‘‘ Who is the God whom we should revere ? ” A later generation showed how vain is the unaided search for God by interpreting the poet’s noble words to mean, ‘‘ There is a god called Who and we should make sacrifices to Who.” And in later generations the priests were required to make two sets of offerings, one to a god called Who and one to a God called Whom—as separate deities. Thus the innate human instinct for God utters its cry and thus the untaught human hand answers that cry by building altars to an unknown and an un¬ knowable God. In his introduction to Hiawatha, Longfellow said: “Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, Who have faith in God and nature, Who believe that in all ages Every human heart is human; 16 THE HIGHEST OFFICE That in even savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings For the good they comprehend not; That the feeble hands and helpless Groping blindly in the darkness Touch God’s right hand in that darkness, And are lifted up and strengthened— Listen to this simple story, To this song of Hiawatha.” He is doubtless right in his position that in even savage bosoms there is a consciousness of God and a flickering spasmodic yearning for God; but he is over-confident if he means to teach that every such untaught savage will find God. How can they hear without a preacher? How can they under¬ stand except some man interpret to them the un¬ known God whom they have "perchance touched? So, whether we consult the untaught savage, the heathen philosopher, the Jewish prophet, the Chris¬ tian apostle, or the poet of ancient or modern times, we find the need of a qualified and authorized re¬ ligious teacher universally recognized and the com¬ ing of such a teacher universally desired. A second evidence that the pastoral office has its basis in nature is found in a universal custom of mankind. Wherever man is, religion is. Wher¬ ever religion is we find the officers of religion. The facts of history justify Hoppin in saying, ** Wherever man is or has been found something essentially corresponding to the office of Christian THE BASIS 17 pastor or permanent religious teacher has in fact been also found to exist.’^ Every religion has had its priest. It is true that many of the religious dig¬ nitaries have been cringing sycophants, selfish para¬ sites, who made religion a vehicle of fraud, graft, impurity and cruelty. But while these priestly ab¬ surdities and immoralities would tend to invalidate the religion they taught, they establish our proposi¬ tion that there is in man's nature an unquenchable desire for a religious teacher. But for this in¬ stinct for a spiritual guide the ^athen peoples would repudiate their absurd ancEunworthy relig¬ ious functionaries. Their mimetic dances, their mystery games, their wild incantations, their furi¬ ous bodily exercises, their absurdly artificial char¬ acter-testing ordeals, their licentious orgies, their human sacrifices, all in the name of religion are unthinkable to one accustomed to the lofty sim¬ plicity of Hebrew prophet or Jewish priest or Christian pastor, but alike with prophet, priest and pastor they furnish the proof that man universally desires and feels the need of a religious teacher and that the pastoral office so far from being super¬ ficial and arbitrary has its roots in man's essential nature. A still further reason for maintaining that the office is founded in nature is the instinctive shep¬ herd heart. We all know men who seem to have been like Paul, separated from birth to the pastoral office. By nature, gifts, qualifications, tempera- 18 THE HIGHEST OFFICE mental and intellectual tendencies, certain men seem foreshadowed to this office. The Latins had a proverb: poeta mscitur non fit (The poet is born, not made). Substitute “preacher"’ for “poet” and you have stated a deeper, more essential truth. We all know men both in history and in the limited sphere of our personal acquaintance who were evi¬ dently born with the preacher’s heart and the preacher’s hand and the preacher’s habit. In this work they are happy and successful, but you could no more train them into the happy and successful pursuit of any other calling than you could train a fig into a thistle. Some men are so imbued with the spirit of self- sacrifice, so endued with the power of human sym¬ pathy, so saturated with moral earnestness, so dauntlessly determined to know and teach the truth, so exquisitely spiritual in their trend of mind and so delicately discriminating in both conception and statement of religious truth that if there were no office of the ministry we would feel the neces¬ sity of creating it that such men might have a place where they could function and where their gifts could be exercised to the greatest good of society. In concluding the story of his conversion from infidelity, B. H. Carroll said, “ I knew then as well as I know now that I would preach, that it would be my life-work, that I would have no other work.” Will you try to imagine certain men having any other business than that of gospel preacher? Try THE BASIS 19 it on Origen, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Ambrose. Try it on Wyclif, Luther, Calvin, John Knox. Try it on Schleiermacher, John Wesley, Christmas Evans, Jonathan Edwards. Try it on Spurgeon, Moody, Beecher, Phillips Brooks. Or, to come to living men, select a group of the spiritual leaders within your own acquaintance and try it on any of them. Imagine Bishop Candler a contented, care¬ free commercial traveller. Imagine William An¬ derson the pleased and prosperou^_^resident of a bank in Dallas. Imagine G. W.VTruett the suc¬ cessful manager of a Texas railroad. Imagine E. Y. Mullins the proud proprietor of a depart¬ ment store in Louisville. These men have the abil¬ ity to fill these secular places nobly. All these are in themselves honourable callings, but these men are so evidently set apart by a divine edict for the work of preaching that we would count them de¬ graded in entering even the noblest secular calling. Or if you are a preacher, imagine yourself out of the Gospel Ministry and giving your time and en¬ ergy to some worthy commercial calling. If, as you imagine it, such a change would bring you no especial embarrassment and no sense of incongruity and no feeling of shame, you will never make the right sort of preacher. It proves that you are lack¬ ing in those delicate, undefined, indefinable, intan¬ gible temperamental qualities so essential to the ideal gospel minister. I would not say what Spur¬ geon is reported (perhaps falsely) to have said, 20 THE HIGHEST OFFICE that a man ought not to enter the ministry if he can stay out of it, but I will say that if a man finds him¬ self happy or satisfied or even unembarrassed in any other calling he has no proper place in the ministry. Having said this, we must admit with sadness that there are ministers (many of them alas, alas) whose entrance upon a secular calling would elicit neither surprise nor comment nor regret. They are secular in their thinking, worldly in their ideals, carnal in their methods. In their conduct and con¬ versation they reveal none of those marks of sepa¬ rateness that characterize the God-made and God- called preacher. Paul believed that the preacher was a man separated and consecrated to the work of preaching the gospel. His life program was “ this one thing I do.” Gloriously he lived that program. The preachers of the first church set a worthy example to all their successors when they not only desired but demanded that they be relieved of secular entanglements though of the noblest and most altruistic kind, that they might “ continue steadfast in prayer and in the ministry of the word ” (Acts 6:4). For this zvork of pastor God has peculiarly qualified certain men. If there is to be no such office it is not easily understood why these men have had bestowed upon them the intellectual, tem¬ peramental and spiritual gifts peculiarly and spe¬ cifically qualifying them for such an office. THE BASIS 21 Here is an engineer about to start his engine on its long journey with its trainload of passengers. He sees a nut fall from his engine. Taking it up he sees that it was made to fit a bolt of a certain size. Knowing that the machinist would not have made it and put it in the engine unless he had also made a bolt it would fit, he delays his train till he finds that bolt. The nut made to fit a bolt argues the existence of that bolt. So a^an specifically qualified of God to fill an office implies the divine purpose that there should be such an office. The preacher with the God-given pastor heart and the instinctive desire for the pastoral office furnishes good evidence that God decreed and established that office. Now the foregoing leads to some inevitable prac¬ tical conclusion to which we may well give a little serious reflection. 1. If the pastoral office is thus imbedded in the very nature of things every man who feels himself called to this fundamental task ought to enter it with the deepest sense of reverence for the office. To such a man the ministry is not a calling of such superficial nature that it can be taken up and laid down as a matter of personal choice or individual convenience. To such a man it is not a task of such secondary importance that it may be pursued in a half-hearted slip-shod perfunctory way. To such a man the ministry is not a life of slavish humdrum and ordinary commonplace drudgery. 22 THE HIGHEST OFFICE but a life so replete with the highest and best that it stirs every romantic instinct and appeals to every chivalrous impulse, calling into activity everything in his nature that is best and noblest. He enters it with Paul’s compelling sense of—“ Woe is me if I preach not the gospel ”; and he continues in it with Paul’s exalted purpose—“ I magnify mine office and he labours in it with Paul’s undivided consecra¬ tion—“ This one thing I do ”; and he prosecutes it with Paul’s sacrificial self-forgetful willingness to—‘‘ gladly spend and be spent ” in meeting its lofty demands; and he dedicates to it a clean holy life, saying with Paul (2 Cor. 6: 3-10): “ Giving no offence in anything, that the ministry be not blamed: But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God in much patience, in afflic¬ tions, in necessities, in distress, in stripes, in impris¬ onments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fast¬ ings ; By pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” 2. If this office is thus embedded in the nature THE BASIS 23 of things, it demands that churches give these men the opportunity of using their gifts. If there is any truth in the talk about a growing shortage of men entering the ministry and increasing tendency for those who are in to drop out and enter other more or less altruistic callings, may it not be at least partially due to the fact that the churches are so niggardly in their giving that th^y do not afford a support that would make it pos^le for a man to give himself with an undivided heart to the dis¬ charge of his duties as a preacher. Nearly all rural churches in the South are either Methodist or Baptist. When we consider the fact that eight¬ een out of every twenty rural Baptist churches and fifteen out of every seventeen rural Methodist churches in the South have only once a month preaching, and that practically all these are supplied by absentee pastors, and that the very large ma¬ jority of these pastors are forced to give more than half their time to secular callings in order to live, how can we expect anything else than that the preacher shall be dehearted of his power and the ministry as a life's calling deflowered of its charm ? If there is that in human nature that calls for the ministrations of the spiritual teacher then human nature must not be too parsimonious to so maintain this spiritual teacher that he may give himself wholly to the altruistic exercise of his shepherd gifts. A fourth-time church with its absentee pastor and with the doors of its meeting house 24 THE HIGHEST OFFICE closed 90 per cent, of the time, can contribute very little, to the community, and certainly affords a very slight challenge to the chivalrous devotion of a red-blooded man to become its pastor. If these men favoured with the gift of the shepherd-heart are to do their best for humanity’s instinctive call for spiritual leaders they must not be handicapped by the burden of “ much serving ” in other spheres —and the churches must afford them equipment and opportunity to have an effectual hand in moulding the spiritual life of the people. The lamented Sylvester Horne spoke a great truth when he said: “ The preacher who is the mes¬ senger of God is the real master of society, not elected by society to be its ruler but elect of God to form its ideals and through them to guide and rule its life. Show me the man who in the midst of a community however secularized in its manners can compel it to think with him, can kindle its enthusiasm, revive its faith, cleanse its passions, purify its ambitions and give stedfastness to its will, and I will show you the real matter of society, no matter what party may nominally hold the reins of government, no matter what figure-head may occupy the nominal place of authority.” If such is the preacher’s lofty prerogative what a pity to shackle him with lack of opportunity or lack of equipment, and what a tragedy if having such opportunity and equipment he is too petty and frivolous and short-sighted to utilize them. II THE TITLES OF THE OFFICE I was appointed a preacher, apostle, teacher/^ —1 Timothy 2: L S hakespeare was nght^ saying that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But he was wrong if he held, as the context seems to imply, that there is nothing in a name. Often have we seen a man handicapped through life by the name his parents gave him or by the nickname given him by his companions. The character and standing of the preacher in any given age will be at least suggested by the names or titles given him by his contemporaries. It is an interesting fact that every title applied to the preacher whether scriptural or vernacular implies, when its etymology is traced, the highest respect for him and his office. Let us now give attention to some of these titles. We study them not primarily for the sake of information about the titles themselves, but because the titles of the office will throw much light on the nature and duties of the office. I. Some Titles not Found in Scripture 1. Clergyman. The word is derived from the 25 26 THE HIGHEST OFFICE Latin, Clericus (a priest). The Latin word is a transliteration of the Greek word, (Clericos), which has the same meaning. The Greek word comes from ^^rjpog (^cleros) which means a lot or something chosen by lot. Its being applied to the pastoral office arose no doubt from the primitive custom of choosing church officers by lot (Acts 1: 36). As a specific title the word clergyman, though more frequent in England, is rarely used in this country except among Episco¬ palians, or their superficial imitators. The generic word clergy is quite generally used when it is de¬ sired to distinguish preachers as a class from the so-called laity. Let us turn aside here to discuss for a moment the expression Benefit of Clergy.” The phrase furnishes an illustration of the growth of words. It is by many supposed to mean that in England a certain class of criminals were put to death, being denied the spiritual ministrations of a clergyman. But not so. It originally referred to the privilege claimed by the Mediaeval Church of having its clergy exempt from trial before civil courts. Black- stone says: “ The ancient usage was for the bishop to demand his clerics to be tried in the bishop’s instead of the king’s court.” In 1330 by an edict of Edward III the exemption was extended to all who could read. The civil courts could not punish the crime of any man who like a clergyman could read. The pleasing feature as it relates to this THE TITLES 27 Study is that it shows the clergy and the class who could read were considered practically identical. It emphasizes also the instinctive tribute men pay to education—putting it on the same plane with religion. Clergy and intelligence were words that represented ideas used almost interchangeably. 2. Rector, The word isj^rived from the Latin regere (to lead straight, to rule). Etymologically it implies three things expected of the preacher. (1) He must be a man qualified to lead. (2) He must be a straightforward man. (3) He must be a man clothed with authority. The word indicates the high regard in which their religious teachers are held by the people. The title is still in common use, limited however to the Church of England and in this country to the Episcopalians, and it is sometimes applied by the Catholics to the parish priest. They more often, however, apply it to the superior (head) of a college or seminary and it has often been so used by those not Catholics. The word regent ’’ so often used to indicate the con¬ trolling authority of a College or University has the same Latin origin as rector.” For a long time the President of Yale College was called '' Rector ” instead of “ President.” Thus again we see the official representative of religion vitally connected with education. How superficial the sceptic’s sneer that the ministers of the Christian religion have retarded and opposed higher educa¬ tion. Taken as a class they have been in every 28 THE HIGHEST OFFICE country Its patrons. Along the trail of the ages their contribution to every branch of higher educa¬ tion has far surpassed that of any other calling— perhaps that of all other callings. 3. Parson. Why should a preacher object to being called parson ? It is the old English way of saying person.” They pronounced person par¬ son ” just as they pronounced clerk “ dark.” When they spoke of the minister as “ the parson ” they designated him the preeminent individual in the community. It is true the word has degenerated by use, as so many words do, and is now often spoken by way of disparagement. It is also ad¬ mitted that words mean what they mean and not what they used to mean. But if “ some lewd fel¬ low of the baser sort ” thinks to discount you, my sensitive young brother, by calling you ‘‘ parson,” recoup yourself by remembering the word’s noble etymology, and mollify your lacerated epidermis with the reflection that in applying to you the title that designates you the chief person in the com¬ munity, the churl spoke more wisely than he knew. 4. Reverend. The word comes from the Latin revereri (to fear). It occurs one time in our English Bible (Ps. 111:9) and is there applied to God. For this reason and perhaps others, there are many who object to it as a title applied to men. If our use of it implies the etymological meaning it hardly embodies the New Testament notion of the pastoral oflice. Spurgeon seems to have ob- THE TITLES 29 jected to the title not so much on etymological nor on scriptural grounds as on general principles. When asked by one of his students as to the use of this title he is reported to have said, “ It depends on who he is. If he i^ very small mite of a man whom no one would ste except with a microscope, call him Reverend. If he is anybody that is any¬ body, you need not.'' But the man who objects to being called parson " should not object to being called Reverend" for he said then, Words mean what they mean and not what they used to mean." If the word once carried the idea of awe and cringing fear that idea when it is used as a ministerial title is no longer in it. As now used among us the word simply means that the man to whom it is applied is a preacher. In every-day use it means that; just that; nothing more, nothing less. There are other titles that some of us prefer, but life is so full of real issues that we might well regard this one as negligible. Epithetiphobia is neither fatal nor dangerous, but it sometimes makes a patient a little uncomfortable and slightly disagreeable. 5. Doctor. Originally this was an academic title indicating that the bearer of it was sufficiently versed in a certain branch of knowledge to teach it. Now it is used to indicate that the possessor of it has taken the highest degree in a College, University or Seminary. The degree is often con¬ ferred when there is little learning and less merit. 30 THE HIGHEST OFFICE It is growing more and more common to call all ministers ‘‘ Doctor/’ Such people forget or never knew that Doctor ” is a scholar’s and not a preacher’s title. If a preacher bears the title it is not because he is a preacher, but because he is, or is supposed to be, a scholar. Usually the scholar who wears the title “ Doctor of Divinity ” is a preacher. But the degree is occasionally conferred upon men who are not preachers. So that “ D. D.” does not necessarily imply a preacher. There are noble brothers who hold that when Jesus said, “Be not ye called Rabbi” (Matt. 3: 8), He was specifically forbidding the degree of Doctor of Di¬ vinity. The brother who holds that view should burn his Master’s diploma whether in theology or arts, for the tenth verse forbids us to be called master. This brother should never say “ Father Buckner ” again, nor allow the little orphans to say it. He should also call his paternal ancestor “ Dad ” or “ the old man,” for the ninth verse for¬ bids us to call any man on the earth father. See the folly of “ mere verbal and literal interpreta¬ tion.” In his commentary on Matthew, Dr. Broadus has a sane word on this question. “ What our Lord prohibits,” he says, “ is desire for the distinction involved in being recognized as a re¬ ligious teacher. A man who shows great desire ‘ to be invited into the pulpit ’ or otherwise pub¬ licly treated as a minister is exactly violating this command. The title of Doctor of Divinity is often THE TITLES 31 so conferred, so sought, so borne and so declined as to come under this head, but it is the spirit in¬ volved rather than the phrase that should be con¬ demned/’ Title fever is a very unaccountable and a very infectious disease. The germ is very prolific in Theological Seminary atmospheres. Perhaps the best remedy ior it is a mixture in equal parts of religion and common sense. It is said of the late Mrs. J. B. Gambrell that when her dis¬ tinguished husband received this degree, she told him: “ The degree of Doctor of Divinity is like the curl in a pig’s tail—somewhat ornamental, but it does not add anything to the weight of the pig.” I would rather be a mouse-trap that could do the business than a mogul engine that could not pull. It is the man, my brothers,—what he is and what he can do that counts, and not the source and num¬ ber of his degrees. “ The rank is but the guinea’s stamp The man’s the gold for a’ that.” But let us turn now to discuss II. Some Titles Found in Scripture 1. Apostle. The Greek noun is &TT6(7roXo s y' that^the preacher is beset with difficulties, perplexi¬ ties, sorrows and shadows peculiar to his office. | Let us take a brief glance at some of these shad¬ ows. 1. The meagre, uncertain, semi-mendicant character of his support. It is meagre. Leave out fifty cities and the average salary of the preach¬ ers in the United States is less than six hundred dollars per year. His pay is not far below the rest of the wage-earning world, but when the preacher compares his income with that of professional men, it seems very small indeed. For a concrete case here are two brothers. One a preacher; the other a lawyer twenty years his junior. The preacher is confessedly the lawyer's equal in native ability and has had better literary and professional training. The lawyer gets a retainer fee of six thousand dol- 225 226 THE HIGHEST OFFICE lars a year from one firm whether he has a case in court or not. The preacher at the lawyer’s age was receiving the munificent sum of seven hundred and twenty dollars a year. This is not meant to encourage the too frequent whine which the preacher makes about the inade¬ quacy of his pay. The truth is that the capable, trained, consecrated preacher will receive sufficient compensation to keep him and his family in reason¬ able comfort. Having this, why should he not be therewith content? The real hardship here dis¬ cussed is not that the right sort of preacher does not get a reasonably comfortable living, but that there is no justice in the disparity of his compensa¬ tion and that of his brother lawyer, doctor, etc. Every right-minded preacher knows that in this and many other things he must forego his inherent right for expediency’s sake. Let the preacher de¬ cide for himself if there is truth in this paradox*. Often the preacher has no right to do what he has a right to do. Furthermore, the average preacher’s pay is not only meagre but it is uncertain. Other salaried men receive their pay at a specified time. In the majority of the pastorates the preacher never knows just when he will receive his. In fact there are many pastorates in which about the only thing a preacher can be certain of is that he will never receive all that is promised him. He makes his monthly bills with little hope that he shall be able SOME LOWEEING SHADOWS 227 to meet them promptly when they are due because it is reasonably certain that the church will not be prompt in paying him. But the worst feature about the preacher’s sup¬ port is that he is often regarded by those who pro¬ vide it as a sort of semi-mendicant. It is hard to persuade some virile men that a preacher is not an object of charity. There is, for example, a mer¬ chant who runs on his books what he calls a charity account. Under this account he credits himself with his monthly payments on his pastor’s salary. This item appears on his books with the amounts he contributed to the widow and the orphan, and the blind Italian with his monkey. If that by no means unusual attitude to the preacher does not cause his face to mantle he has soapsuds in his veins and not blood. Every chivalrous, high- minded preacher chafes, not so much because of the meagreness and uncertainty of his salary, but because in receiving it he is supposed by many to assume about the attitude of a mendicant friar. An infidel lawyer once referred to me as ‘‘ the man who makes his living by passing the hat.” It makes my blood boil and to this day I almost want to fight him every time I see him. The only con¬ solation I find in it is that his statement had not an atom of truth in it. I have done a good deal of hat passing in my life, but it has always been for somebody else and never for myself. The pound party, the Christmas donations, the ten per cent. 228 THE HIGHEST OFFICE discount on dry-goods, the half fare on railroads, all have their origin in the idea that the preacher is about half man and half beggar. All kinds of euphemistic explanations can be made of these ‘‘ courtesies to the preacher, but in the last analy¬ sis they spring from the yet widespread notion that the preacher is a kind of modified pauper who must be at least partially maintained by donations from the tender-hearted. 2. Another shadow in the pastor’s life is found in an embarrassing separateness. People will not accord the preacher the same treatment they give other men. In trying to give the preacher a little better treatment than they give to each other they arouse in him a sickening sense of isolation and aloofness. The manly preacher does not want to be coddled; he does not want to be put on a pedestal; he wants to take his place in the trenches with the rank and file; he has no use for the Pharisee’s prayer, “ I thank thee that I am not as other men.” The genuine preacher knows and wants others to know that he has no sacerdotal accessories that entitle him to respect apart from the respect due to any man of worthy character. Worldly men sometimes refer somewhat obse¬ quiously to their “ respect for the cloth.” The preacher’s “ cloth ” is no more entitled to respect than that of the ditch digger. In both cases it is what is inside the cloth that entitles the man to re¬ spect. SOME LOWEEING SHADOWS 229 I suppose that nobody ever really said that there •were four genders—masculine, feminine, neuter, and ministerial. If one might judge, however, by the patronizing air some people assume to the preacher and alas, alas, by the effeminate bearing of some preachers themselves, such a grammatical distinction could be successfully justified. If there is anything in the whole realm of the genus homo that fills a genuine soul with a disgust and contempt beyond words it is the ministerial mollycoddle who admits for a moment that there are virile qualities and manly functions that other adult males may properly have and exercise but which are foreign to him. Phillips Brooks strikes a responsive chord in every right-thinking preacher’s heart when he says: “ I wish that it were possible for one to speak to the laity of our churches frankly and freely about their treatment of the clergy. The clergy are largely what the laity make them. And though one may look wholly without regret upon the departure of that reverence which seems to have clothed the preachers’ office in our fathers’ days, I think he must have many misgivings about the weaker substitute for it, which in many in¬ stances has taken its place. It was not good that the minister should be worshipped and made an oracle. It is still worse that he should be flattered and made a pet.’’ 3. The preacher finds a further shadow in 230 THE HIGHEST OFFICE frequent misinterpretation and misrepresenta'- tion. More than the man of any other call¬ ing the preacher is before the public. His actions and his utterances are scrutinized more closely, judged more rigorously and aired more re¬ lentlessly than those of any other man. The igno¬ rant, the narrow, the visionless and the bigoted do not understand him because they are not capable of seeing things from his viewpoint and they there¬ fore innocently misinterpret him greatly to his loss and sorrow. The vicious, the self-seeking and the spiteful do not want him to be understood and therefore they maliciously misrepresent him. When you consider the mistakes that he does make and add to them the multitude attributed to him that he does not make, it is really a wonder that a preacher ever gets out of any community with a decent reputation. But the masses are reasonably sane and intuitively know how to make allowance for ignorant misinterpretation on the one hand and malicious misrepresentation on the other. In my younger days I drove an ox team. The team was slow and my dog, which always followed me, would relieve the monotony by frequent excur¬ sions into the woods after rabbit or squirrel or deer. Often he would protract his quest for hours and sometimes after stopping my team to make a bootless search for him, I would conclude that I had lost my dog, but after so long a time he would dash up with smiling face and wagging tail just as SOME LOWEEING SHADOWS 231 if nothing had happened. After a few such expe¬ riences I learned that if I would keep my team moving in the middle of the road the dog would take care of himself. This parable teaches that if a preacher will do right he need not worry about his reputation nor stop his legitimate work to chase it and protect it. Given noble character and cor¬ rect conduct reputation will take care of itself. My hearer concedes the soundness of this position, but next time he is misinterpreted or misrepresented he will wince and flinch and chafe, and perhaps leave his task unfinished and chase off after his reputa¬ tion to see that no harm comes to it. Philosophize about it as we may, it must be admitted that to be put in a false light before a community hurts— unless indeed one is a veritable pachyderm as to sensibilities. But the preacher should not nurse these wounds nor seek to punish those who inflict them. Hoppin, with his habitual poise, says: “A minister should cultivate a large-hearted and loving patience, which is like a sea into which all the mis¬ apprehensions and even enmities of men shall im¬ mediately sink and be forever forgotten.” Pun¬ ishing his enemies, real or imaginary, is the poorest business that ever engaged a preacher’s time and talent. 4. Another pastoral shadow is the frequent un¬ expected zvaywardness and zvorldliness of trusted members of his church. Every good man in the community is grieved by such a tragedy, but the 232 THE HIGHEST OFFICE pastor most of all. In the first place, he realizes more than any one else the harm that will come to the cause of Christ. And again, apart from the offender’s immediate family, the pastor has a deeper interest in him and a keener affection for him than anybody else. Besides, if he is a true shep¬ herd the pastor has a sense of personal responsibil¬ ity for the offender’s conduct. Whatever may be the opinion of others in the matter of responsibility the conscientious pastor often chides himself for the waywardness of a member, saying, If I had been a little more faithful perhaps this could not have happened.” In the old geographies was al¬ ways seen a picture of Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders. In a very real sense the true pastor feels himself to bear some such relation to his church. As there was weeping in every Egyptian home for the unexpected death of the first-born, so there is a tear in every genuine pastor’s heart for the worldly and wayward in his church. 6. A fifth shadozv attending this office is the responsibility and difficulty of leadership. The pastor is not to lord it over God’s heritage; he is not to be a dictator, however benevo¬ lent; he is not to be a boss like a foreman over a bunch of railroad section hands; but as we have already seen, the nature and titles of his office imply the duty and responsibility of leading his V people. To be a leader without being a boss pre¬ sents one of the most delicate problems in the pas- SOME LOWEEING SHADOWS 233 tor’s experience. Here he is confronted with the problem of exercising God-given pastoral authority without becoming offensively dictatorial. The pastor knows that his office implies a certain degree of authority in the church and yet he knows that he cannot appeal to that authority to en¬ force cooperation in any plan he may have for the church. Conscious of his authority he is also conscious that his only way to exer¬ cise it is in the sweet reasonableness of moral suasion. Every advance movement the aggressive pastor undertakes will be met with indifference, with criticism, with opposition. How to go for¬ ward against this tide and carry the indifferent, the critic, the opposer with him is the preacher’s pre¬ eminent problem of leadership. He will need suppleness, dexterity, agility, firmness, candour, courage, tenderness, severity, perseverance and any other virtue that a beneficent Providence may gra¬ ciously bestow on him. To successfully lead a church with five hundred members in aggressive spiritual activities implies a versatility of talent un¬ surpassed by any of the captains of industry or finance or militarism. The man who doubts that such a task is heavy with trials has not tried it. 6. There are many other shadows haunting the pastor’s life, such as a consciousness of personal imperfections, stubborn alienation of the people from the pastor and from one another, death in his congregation, especially of the wicked and unpre- 234 THE HIGHEST OFFICE pared, financial reverses, domestic scandals or other crushing shadows in the homes of his people. But passing these without comment let us con¬ sider finally his heartrending and often inexplicable periods of ministerial barrenness. For the first year of his pastorate new people and new condi¬ tions and new problems give piquancy and enthusi¬ asm to his ministry but during the second year the new wears off. He and his congregation are no longer new to each other and while familiarity has not perhaps bred contempt, it has dulled the edge of former zeal. It is proverbial among observant ministers that the second year is usually the most trying period of a pastorate. The philosophy of it is in the fact that the relation has subsisted long enough for the superficial novelty to wear off and not long enough to develop vital spiritual affinities. This explains psychologically why the majority of pastorates terminate about the end of the second year. But whether at this crucial time or at some other period in his pastorate the gloom of fruitless activity will settle like a London fog about the preacher's bewildered soul and the nightmare of a barren ministry will hold him suffering but helpless in its grip. Alas, for that day! For then, if man ever suffered, the true pastor suffers. Self-con¬ demned for indifference and indolence he prods himself into former activity, but it brings not the old-time joy to his own heart nor finds the old-time response in the hearts of others. The house is on SOME LOWEEING SHADOWS 235 fire and he is constantly running to and from the well but he finds no pleasure in it because he knows he is running with an empty bucket. The battle is on; he puts gun to shoulder and fires with the old- time regularity of movement and precision of aim but no enemy bites the dust as of yore; the car¬ tridge is blank. It is harvest time; with fan in hand he throws the straw and winnows nothing but chaff. It is the time of ripe fruit; he opens his basket in the market-place—nothing but leaves. A tempestuous sea overwhelms him. The rocks of eternal promise upon which his feet were wont to rest flee and crumble. He is wandering in a desert and the heavens are swept clean of his North Star, his Ursa Major and every familiar constellation. Thus brooding on his barrenness he is soon ob¬ sessed with an abnormal mental depression. If he looks on a doughnut he sees nothing but the hole. If he reads the One Hundred and Sixteenth Psalm he sees the third and eleventh verses and misses the rest. Let this chapter close with an incident from the experience of a Texas preacher in one of his earlier pastorates. It was about the close of the second year and the preacher was suffering horrible de¬ pression on account of what he conceived to be a barren ministry. On Sunday morning he preached a doleful sermon and at its conclusion spoke about as follows: ‘‘ Brethren, I think I ought to resign my pasto- 236 THE HIGHEST OFFICE rate. I am doing no good. I remind myself of the man in the Old Testament whose axe fell off the handle into the creek. My work here is about as profitable as his would have been if he had gone about the forest beating on the trees with his axe- handle. I think I ought to quit and go somewhere else.’' When the congregation had been dismissed a brilliant and pious but somewhat eccentric old bachelor approached the young Jeremiah and said: Pastor, did you say the young man lost his axe ? ” “ Yes,” answered the pastor mournfully. ‘‘Well, what did he do when he lost his axe? Did he leave the forest and go off to another un¬ suspecting grove of trees and begin beating on them with his axe-handle ? ” “ No,” said the preacher. “ Well, what did he do? ” pressed the benevolent inquisitor. The preacher, with a tear and a flash of hope starting simultaneously in his eye, answered, “ He went back where he lost it and got it.” “ I think,” said the kindly critic, “ that my pas¬ tor better go back to the spot where he lost his axe and get it.” Full many a preacher has lost his power who could easily regain it, if he would go back to the time and the place where he lost it and rectify the wrong that caused him to lose it. May the surrendered heart and the spirit’s SOME LOWEEING SHADOWS 237 anointing cause the lost axe to swim for every dis¬ couraged preacher. May the Lord give us power. The best remedy for this shadow of conscious imperfection is that one shall be the right sort of preacher. If a man will be a true shepherd the shadows will come, but they will not discourage. If ministerial shadows are to be illuminated, the preacher must furnish a forward-looking, an up¬ ward-looking and an outward-looking ministry. The pathetic call of our churches is for shep¬ herds;—shepherds, not brilliant spellbinding pul¬ piteers ; shepherds, not skillful diplomatic ecclesias¬ tical engineers; shepherds, not adept and tactful church financiers; shepherds, not partisan proselyt¬ ing buccaneers; shepherds, not egotistic, self-seek¬ ing privateers; shepherds, not cold-blooded logical doctrinaires. Our Preeminent Need is An unselfish, sacrificial spirit-filled ministry; not a self-seeking, ease-loving, worldly-minded minis¬ try; a pure, holy, spiritual ministry; not a gross carnal sensual ministry; a liberal, broad, bountiful ministry; not a niggardly parsimonious sordid min¬ istry; a vigorous, forceful, efficient ministry; not a flabby, feeble, flat-minded ministry; a strong, valiant, sturdy ministry; not a weak, flaccid, limp ministry; a firm, dignified, stalwart ministry; not a stale, languid, insipid ministry; a fertile, fruitful, prolific ministry; not a lean, barren, sterile minis- 238 THE HIGHEST OFFICE try; a keen, effective, diversified ministry; not a spiritless, pointless, monotonous ministry; a resili¬ ent, buoyant, fervent ministry; not a heavy, prosy, frigid ministry; a piquant, seasoned, animated min¬ istry; not a tasteless, vapid, lifeless ministry; a virile, masterful, compelling ministry; not a va¬ cant, void, vacuous ministry; a hardy, bold, dar¬ ing ministry; not a hothouse, trembling, cringing ministry; a gentle, meek, tender ministry; not a vitriolic, vituperative, vindictive ministry; a sane, steady, genuine ministry; not a sensational, spec¬ tacular, meteoric ministry; a modest, unassuming, humble ministry; not a pretentious, pompous, os¬ tentatious ministry; an alert, wide-awake, animated ministry; not a lethargic, comatose, moribund min¬ istry. XII SOME INSIDIOUS SNARES OF THE OFFICE Plee also youthful lusts.” —3 Timothy 2: 22. T he layman, thinking superficially, believes that the preacher is practically free from temptation. It must be admitted that there are forms of temptation that beset other men from which the preacher is at least partially ex¬ empt. But it is also true that the very nature of the preacher's office implies certain snares of whose seductive allurements the average layman knows little. In this lecture we will discuss some of these ministerial snares. 1. The first is the snare of Indolence, In most occupations the employer can tabulate a man's work and tell how much he has done each day and make a fairly accurate estimate of how much time he has put in on his job. Not so with the preacher. His congregation cannot tell, neither can he with any degree of accuracy, how much time he used in the preparation of a given sermon. He can tell how much time he took for the physical act of writing the sermon, but he cannot tell how much time in reading, meditation and prayer it took to 239 240 THE HIGHEST OFFICE grow it. The fact that his employers cannot tell how much time he works sets a snare for his hu¬ man frailty tempting him not to work. He can tell, and perhaps some of his employers can tell, how many hours daily he spends in his study, but neither he nor they can tell whether those hours have been fully employed with things pertinent to his task. In those hours in his study he reads many books, has many dreams and sees many visions, but have all those books and dreams and visions been of a type calculated to forward his work? Perhaps more than any other employed man the preacher has an opportunity to waste time unrebuked. With many the opportunity is shame¬ fully utilized. The average preacher wastes more time than he works at his job. I speak both from experience and observation. I do not mean that he is idle more time than he is occupied, though there is some room for talk at that point. What I do mean is that he allows himself to be drawn into a lot of petty, Lilliputian performances that are of no value. If the twentieth century preacher will turn aside from trivialities and inconsequentialities and adopt Paul’s motto, ‘‘ This one thing I do,” and if he will whip himself out of his ease-loving indolence, joining with Paul in “ labouring night and day,” he will always be in demand and his ac¬ tivities will be surprisingly fruitful. 2. Jealousy. It is a humiliating confession but observation forces me to the conclusion that except SOME INSIDIOUS SNAKES 241 physicians, preachers are more given to jealousy than men of any other calling. Christ’s forerun¬ ner seems free from it, for we learn of his rejoic¬ ing because of his own decrease and another’s in¬ crease, but His apostles seem to have had their share of it, since we have instances of their un¬ blushing competition for chief seats and the privi¬ lege of being called the greatest even on the most sacred occasions. That good men could be subject to such a foible cannot be easily explained. I have never heard a preacher admit that there was even a semblance of it in his breast, but often those who most stoutly disclaim it give evidence of its present existence. Nothing is more insidious than minis¬ terial jealousy and no refined frailty more despi¬ cable and none more fatal ultimately to both happi¬ ness and usefulness. Cain, Joseph’s brethren, Saul and Haman are outstanding illustrations of the direful results of jealousy cherished in the heart. Its ruinous effect may not be in every case so spec¬ tacular as in the cases cited but it will be none the less certain. 3. Autocracy. Peter exhorts the elders, ‘‘ Tend the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight not of constraint but willingly, ac¬ cording to the will of God; nor yet for filthy lucre but of a ready mind neither as lording it over the charge allotted to you, but making yourselves en- samples of the flock.” Clerical refusal to heed the injunction not to tyrannize over the church has 242 THE HIGHEST OFFICE wrought great havoc in the world. The insidious, inch-by-inch progress of this tendency toward clerical tyranny culminated in the papal hierarchy and all its blight and tragedy. Dr. Jefferson brings a strong but deserved indictment against it when he says: “What is the story of a thousand years of church history but the tragic narrative of how the ministers of Christ little by little compacted themselves into a hierarchy which became at last the most blighting and intolerable despotism that the world has ever known? The tyranny of the mediaeval church was the tyranny of clergymen. Laymen were crowded out of the place appointed them by the church’s founder. Reduced to mere spectators they had no voice whatever in the gov¬ ernment of the church, all authority being gath¬ ered up into the hands of ecclesiastics, who, rising rank above rank, formed a compact organization culminating in one supreme head who claimed au¬ thority transcending that of the mightiest of the Caesars, and whose agents, distributed throughout the world, lorded it over the consciences of men, gathering into their clutches all the kingdoms of life. It is the supreme tragedy of Christian his¬ tory that this ecclesiastical passion for power in the mediaeval church brought a disgrace upon Christi¬ anity from which it will not recover for another thousand years. The whole world suffers to-day because of what mediaeval clergymen did. The cause of Christ is hampered because of the preju- SOME INSIDIOUS SN^ EES 243 dice planted in the human heart by the imperious and high-handed policy of the ambitious leaders of the Church of Rome.’' But while this tendency to ministerial autocracy has had its most obnoxious efflorescence in the Church of Rome, the preacher of every denomina¬ tion, even the most democratic in government, has his ever-present temptation to the unwarranted as¬ sumption of power. It may help us to reenforce ourselves against this trend if we analyze the situa¬ tion and point out some things in the pastoral office that have a tendency to make the preacher auto¬ cratic, domineering and overbearing. (1) The very nature of his office. He holds the highest office. He is constantly reminded of this fact, especially by the laymen. It is easy for him to conclude that one holding such an exalted office should be granted extraordinary authority. Since he is a shepherd and the members of his congrega¬ tion are only sheep, it is right that he should do their thinking—should manipulate and control them. Thus he abuses the beautiful shepherd metaphor to exalt himself and to assume preroga¬ tives expressly forbidden in the word of God. (2) The nature of the work. In no other call¬ ing is a man quite so independent of human author¬ ity. In the matters of ordering his time and choosing his tasks he is more than any other man monarch of all he surveys.” He may write or read or visit, or he may do all these or neither just 244 THE HIGHEST OFFICE as he likes, and there is no one to say him nay. If he desires to miss a preaching appointment now and then or omit any other pastoral duty he does so without so much as saying “ by your leave ” to anybody. Compared to other callings, what a large liberty is accorded the preacher in the matter of how and when he shall do his work. This com¬ parative immunity from human surveillance has its inevitable tendency to develop the lordly spirit. Happy the man who can and will use this liberty without abusing it. (3) His social prestige. In whatever social functions the minister may figure there is a homage paid him not accorded to other men. His official position gives him a social prestige which is often far in excess of what his natural qualifications would justify. There is a constant danger that this “ burning of incense ” before the minister shall develop in him an unwarranted sense of superiority and lead him to expect and ultimately demand trib¬ ute which he has no right to levy. (4) His free hand in eliciting, combining and directing the activities of the church. The right- thinking minister covets the cooperation of his people in mapping out and executing the program of the church but too often they are busy about other things and gladly give the pastor carte blanche here. Too many take the view of the dea¬ con who when called on by the pastor to lead in prayer, said: ‘‘ Pray yourself; we pay you for it.” SOME INSIDIOUS SNAEES 246 This habit of turning everything over to the preacher—the product of indolence or indifference or worldliness—cultivates in the preacher the un¬ happy notion that the church is his personal prop¬ erty. The New Testament indeed makes him a leader and an overseer, but the church’s unscrip- tural habit of leaving everything in his hands too often makes him a dictator and a boss. The result is that he too easily comes to regard his personal interest and the interest of the church as one and the same-—when they are perhaps very different. Very often the preacher accuses members of his congregation of opposing the church when they are only protesting against some vagary of his. 4. A mild form of hypocrisy. Before elabo¬ rating this point let me say with emphasis that in my judgment the preacher is the most transpar¬ ently frank, sincere, ingenuous of all professional men. But he is all of that in spite of many temp¬ tations to be otherwise. The first cause of an undertow in this direction is that the people have a tendency to apotheosize him ,—to put him on a pedestal above his fellow- men. Since the people seem determined to posit him in this sphere of mental or moral or official superiority he is constantly beset with the tempta¬ tion to play the part. Critical analysis of his inner life reveals to him the fact that he is a man like other men, subject to like passions with them. But the people insist on believing that because he is a 246 THE HIGHEST OFFICE preacher he is essentially a man of loftier charac¬ ter, deeper consecration, more sacrificial spirit than other men, and he is tempted to humour their too high estimate of the difference between himself and others. When Paul and Barnabas preached in Lystra the people called Paul Jupiter and Barnabas Mercury and the priest of Jupiter would have sac¬ rificed oxen and garlands to them as to gods, but the manly preachers vehemently forbade it. Would that every preacher had sense and grace to meet every such sycophantic tendency with equally can¬ did protest. It will pay the preacher to tear from his brow all the garlands that he knows he does not deserve to wear, it matters not how sincerely they may have been placed there. What he would lose in servile flattery and popular adulation he would gain in rugged self-respect. The second tendency to a mild form of hypoc¬ risy grows out of the preacher’s desire to secure and maintain the good-will of his people. This may and usually does spring from both a selfish and an altruistic motive. If he does not maintain the good-will of his people he cannot retain his po¬ sition. It is equally true that if he does not com¬ mand the good-will of his people he cannot do them any good. So on both the bad and the good side of his nature he is tempted to play a little poli¬ tics, to deal out some complimentary platitudes be¬ yond justifying facts—to profess an affection, a confidence, an appreciation not quite real. Let us SOME mSIDIOUS SNAKES 247 not forget, however, that being a gentleman and being a hypocrite are not quite synonymous. Pre¬ ferring to say pleasant things does not imply hy¬ pocrisy any more than choosing to say disagreeable things implies sincerity. Every man, and especially every preacher, is bound to dispense all the pleasure he can consistent with truth and duty. 5. An excessive sentimentalism. Every worthy character is seasoned with a good measure of sen¬ timentalism, but in a sturdy, stalwart man it is never predominant and should never be prominent. The very nature of his task dealing largely with the will and the emotions tempts the preacher to abnormal sentimentality. The ardent exclama¬ tions, the per fervid interjections, the tear-watered expostulations, the sniffing little anecdote of doubtful authenticity,’' and other humid literary exhalations by which the preacher seeks to work up the feelings of his audience often fill the worka¬ day man out in the crowd with secret disgust. An Episcopal layman, editor of the Bellman (Minne¬ apolis), making no secret of his nausea, inquires, “ Where do ministers get all these incidents of sanctimonious drooling? Is this sort of thing a part of the curriculum in theological seminaries, or does there exist a Bureau for the Dissemination of Personal Religious Anecdotes such as there is for supplying funny stories for after-dinner speak¬ ers? The touching story of the ‘ great merchant ’ who condescends to talk religion to one of his 248 THE HIGHEST OFFICE humblest clerks or that of the prominent lawyer who in the midst of his plea turns aside with patronizing ostentation to acknowledge his belief in the Deity, or that ‘ illustrious statesman ’ who is never too busy to wrestle in prayer so that any one who is passing can make a note of it. These and hundreds more of like tenor serve to elucidate the discourse of a certain type of clergymen. If he could by any sort of possibility know how these examples of business piety which he considers so laudable affect the layman, or knowing it could possibly understand how these things cause real men to fidget and squirm and swear inwardly he might learn to reserve these nauseating anecdotes for exclusive use among those less sophisticated in the ways of the world.’’ Even though a little censorious is he not doing the preacher a good turn in calling his attention to a vei*y prevalent fault? Pathetic anecdotes, emotional illustrations, and pious ejaculations repel rather than attract the twentieth century layman. He both needs and wants some solid food. This does not mean that even the big layman does not need to have his feelings stirred. It does mean, however, that the gushy, frothy, effusive, historical (?) incident by which the preacher often seeks to accomplish this end is capable of arousing no higher emotion than that of disgust. 6. Despondency. When the modern preacher considers Elijah and Jonah he counts himself in SOME INSIDIOUS SNARES 249 direct line of prophetic if not apostolic succession. The gourd vine and the juniper tree have loomed large in the experience of the average preacher. This evil spirit seems native to every land and for it there is a name in every language. How uni¬ versal and yet how foolish and even sinful is de¬ spondency. When these fits are on him the preacher is oversensitive and feels himself slighted and neglected. He is sure that his talents are under¬ estimated and his achievements not appreciated. He is halting between resigning his pastorate and committing suicide. What is the cause of this strange undertow ? Sometimes it is indigestion or other physical disorder, sometimes it is an over¬ strained nervous system; sometimes it is a selfish overestimate of his own merit; sometimes it is spiritual backsliding. Whatever the cause its fears and misgivings are usually imaginary and steal away as silently and unexpectedly as they came, leaving no scars. Hoping that it may hearten some despondent preacher let me quote a few words from Marcus Dods in his diary for March 8, 1860. He says: “ No day passes without strong temptation to give up the work—the temptation appeals to me on the ground that I am not fitted for pastoral work; writing sermons is often the hardest labour for me, visiting is terrible. I often stand before a door unable to ring or knock—sometimes I have gone away without entering. A lowness of spirit that 250 THE HIGHEST OFFICE costs me a great deal to throw off is the consequence of this, and a real doubt whether it would not be better for myself and all whom it may concern that I should at once look for some work that I could overtake.” If my preacher friend is saying Marcus Dods is writing my biography ” let him console himself with the further reflection that this same despondent Marcus Dods became a great col¬ lege president and one of the foremost preachers and scholars of the nineteenth century. Brother, if the Lord has put you into this ministry, don’t quit. Things will get better further on. 7. Narrowness, The man was doubtless slan¬ dered of whom it was told that he prayed, ‘‘ Lord, bless me and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no more.” But some of us are headed very decidedly in that direction. What greater blight could befall a preacher than that he should be narrow, short-sighed, dim-eyed? How lavish God is when He blesses a man with the seeing eye. They say that a cat can look at a king. They tell the truth but a cat cannot see a king. It may see his crown and his royal robe and his waving sceptre and all the physical appointments of kingship,— but it cannot see the inner qualities of chivalry and patriotism and altruism essential to the making of a king. No man is really qualified to preach whose power to see and apprehend is limited to his physical senses. Elisha’s servant was a cringing coward till in answer to the prophet’s prayer his SOME INSIDIOUS SNAKES 251 eyes were opened and he saw the hitherto invisible hosts of horses and chariots of fire filling the moun¬ tainside. There are three classes of men: those who see less than they see, those who see just what they see, and those who see more than they see. To which of these three groups do you belong? Your achievements in life will depend largely upon the answer to this question. Three men stood on the northern shore of the Island of Cyprus looking to¬ ward the southern shores of Asia Minor. One of them, John Mark, saw only privation, hardship and danger. He saw less than he saw. Sergius Paulus saw a people and country somewhat similar to his own. He saw just what he saw. Paul saw a heathen people converted to Christ with their churches and preachers and glorious kingdom ac¬ tivities. John Mark saw less than he saw and, be¬ coming a reactionary, went back. Sergius Paulus saw just what he saw, and becoming a conserva¬ tive stayed just where he was. Paul saw more than he saw, and becoming a progressive, hastened into a boat bound for Asia Minor that he might pull down to earth the churches he had seen float¬ ing in the air above the cities of Derbe, Lystra and Iconium. Oh, for an Elisha to pray for the open¬ ing of every young preacher’s eyes that he may have what Paul called “ the heavenly vision.” A little, narrow, picayunish, pigeon-toed preacher is an ecclesiastical monstrosity. Along with culture 252 THE HIGHEST OFFICE and spirituality and consecration may the Lord give His preachers the seeing eye. 8. The snare of the '' big IT Humility is a jewel wherever found. It is nowhere more charm¬ ing than in the life of a minister. In that life its opposite seems most incongruous and unsavoury. And yet the preacher seems to be tempted more than most men to exploit himself. Observation leads me to believe this statement true, whether we consider his private conversations, his public utterances or his printed productions. Many preachers seem to have lost all sense of ordinary propriety and natural delicacy to say nothing of Christian humility when they come to speak and write of their own achievements. If a man has prayed all night or read an unusual number of books, or endangered his health by zealous re¬ ligious activity, he need not advertise the fact. It will get out on him and when it does it will come out in better odour than if he tell it himself. It is quite possible that he has added an unusual number to the churches, has raised phenomenal sums of money where everybody else had failed, and has solved difficult denominational problems that had baffled our greatest leaders, but the news would sound better if somebody else discovered and an¬ nounced it. It may be true, but generally is not, that some secular enterprise has offered him sev¬ eral times larger salary if he will give up the min¬ istry and give his great financial genius to pro- SOME INSIDIOUS SNARES 253 moting a tin whistle factory or a patent dimmer for a Ford car. But if all this happened the re¬ port of it will sound better coming from the secu¬ lar enterprise instead of the preacher. It may be further said that when such an offer is made it is far from complimentary to the preacher. Imagine a business man offering John A. Broadus or Phil¬ lips Brooks or B. H. Carroll a job. It may be that the church and the people generally are saying that yours is the most constructive and fruitful pastor¬ ate that the church has ever known. That is a very refreshing piece of ecclesiastical history but it does not look good over the pastor’s signature. How would this do for an article in next week’s denominational paper: “ How I Surpassed All My Predecessors Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in unblushing detail how their ministry is resulting in more additions, larger audiences, and greater collections than the commonplace labours of those who preceded them, it seemed good to me also to give an account of how in my various pas¬ torates I surpassed all my predecessors. In my first pastorate the audiences quadrupled in three weeks what they had been for six months before my going. In another pastorate the mission collections were twice as large my first year as they had been the year before I went. In another pas¬ torate the church built a splendid house of worship immediately after putting me in the pastoral sad¬ dle. So remarkable are my evangelistic gifts that in one of my pastorates more than twenty people 264 THE HIGHEST OFFICE came forward in one of our regular Sunday night services when no meeting was on to ask for bap¬ tism. In another pastorate the church had en¬ joyed a precarious existence for years under the leadership of my predecessors and after years of struggle had only about fifty members when I took charge. I remained there four years and when I left the church had a membership of seven hun¬ dred.” Now who will deny that I have had a remark¬ ably brilliant pastoral career if one may judge by these samples? Surely you will remove your san¬ dals and prostrate yourself before me, saying, “ Sir, you are a person of preeminent importance.” But sacrificing egotism upon the altar of the truth of history I must confess that while all I have said is true—it is only half the truth. The whole truth will take all the glamour away and leave me a very ordinary individual. The whole truth is that in the first pastorate there had been no pastor for more than a year preceding my bril¬ liant advent. No wonder the congregations grew. In that pastorate where the collections made such an advance the church had before my going been served by a semi-hardshell preacher who never took any collections at all. It is not hard to double nothing. In that pastorate where the fine house was built the money had all been raised, plans adopted and contract let under the ministry of my predecessor. He did the work and I got the newspaper pyro¬ technics. SOME INSIDIOUS SNARES 255 In that pastorate where the score applied for baptism at a regular Sunday night service I failed to tell that they were all children from a near-by orphans’ home, converted in a meeting held in the home by another brother, which meeting I did not even attend. Twenty of the children wanted to be Baptists and ours happened to be the nearest church to them. In the last spectacular instance where the church grew from sixty to seven hundred, I failed to state that the little church had for years been trying to maintain itself in the remote outskirts of Waco, where there was almost no population, and about the time of my becoming pastor, had moved into town under the shadow of Baylor University in the heart of the thickest Baptist population in the world. The growth was due to change of location and not to brilliant pastoral leadership. I have said these things for a twofold purpose. In the first place I want to comfort my ordinary compatriots who have wondered why the brethren’s pastorates were so brilliant while theirs were so commonplace. In the second place I want to sug¬ gest to my brilliant brother that when he has writ¬ ten a report of work, making self-laudatory com¬ parisons of the present with the past, the best dis¬ position of that report is to stick it in the fire. All such comparisons are usually misleading and always “ odorous ”—malodorous, and should never be made by a self-respecting preacher. XIII SOME GLORIOUS REWARDS OF THE OFFICE Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown!^ —2 Timothy 4: 8. I S it good to emphasize the preacher’s reward? May we not thus vitiate his work by appeal¬ ing to unworthy motives? There are those who would have us believe that the preacher ought not to consider his rewards, neither temporal nor spiritual. One school tells us that the preacher must act from a high sense of duty, another that he must be moved by a broad altruism and still another that he must be constrained by the impulse of gratitude and so on through the list. The truth about it is that the preacher is not shut up to one motive or set of motives. He will probably be moved by a composite force including the fear of punishment, the hope of reward, gratitude, altru¬ ism, idealism and a cold sense of duty. None of these are bad, but, within proper limits, are alto¬ gether good and worthy. There is certainly noth¬ ing essentially unworthy in the preacher seeking encouragement from a consideration of the re¬ wards that shall come to him as a result of the 256 SOME GLOEIOUS BEWAEDS 257 faithful discharge of duty. On this subject Dr. C. E. Jefferson truly says: ‘‘ In all His paintings Jesus leaves no unfinished pictures. If He paints a sower sowing the seed, He paints also the harvest growing golden in the sun. If He sketches men working in a vineyard, He sketches them at even¬ ing time receiving each man his wages.^' When Peter said: “We have left all and followed thee,’^ Jesus encouraged him by saying: “ There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the Gospel’s but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecution; and in the world to come, eternal life.” Paul in his old age encour¬ aged his own drooping spirit and through the ages helped millions of his fellow Christians by empha¬ sizing the ultimate reward of faithful service when he said: “ I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.” Throughout the Scriptures men are appealed to and urged to action on the basis of the reward the action will bring. So there seems to be no good reason why the preacher may not be 258 THE HIGHEST OFFICE led to think gratefully of the rewards that may come in the course of his life-work. In this chap¬ ter let us consider some of these rewards. 1. His temporal rewards, (a) Financial. As a rule the preacher is not overpaid. In many cases, particularly in country churches, he is underpaid. But the average preacher is not the starveling that the brother long on statistics proves him to be. In the average town a little investigation will show that the preacher’s income is about equal to the superinten¬ dent of the public schools. He will have a pretty hard time living on his income, but there are doubt¬ less school teachers in his town, and clerks and office men who are paid no better than he. The statistical brother deceives himself about the pay the preachers get by overlooking the fact that probably fifty per cent, of the preachers included in his generalization are either not preaching at all and therefore getting no pay from the churches, or are preaching for one-fourth or one-half time churches, and give from three to five days each week to some secular work. Both these rather large classes receive pay not included in the statistician’s estimate of how much pay the preacher gets. Then, too, our statistical brother ought to remember that if it is sometimes poor pay it is also sometimes poor preach.” Personally I rejoice in every step toward in¬ creasing the pay of the preacher. If I were writ- SOME GLOEIOUS EEWAEDS 259 ing on that subject I could give some unanswerable reasons why it should be done. My only purpose here is to show that there is not as much ground for pity toward us preachers as some people would have us believe. As a class we are not very well paid. In most cases we would do better work if we were better paid. But tlie fact that the people appreciate our ministry enough to feed and clothe us and our families, while we give ourselves to it, is gratifying. That this support is rendered volun¬ tarily, as a rule gladly, and often at a sacrifice is to a thoughtful man a reward for his service. This reward does not lie so much in the money paid as in the sincere appreciation of service that the pay¬ ing of the money implies. Whatever may be said on the subject, this way or that, it is certainly in order to express the hope that we are, or soon shall be, forever delivered from the whining, dissatisfied, despondent, dependent preacher who is always on the brink of starvation but never quite willing to topple over the ^precipice. In the same breath, let us venture the wish that we may see no more of that tribe of laymen who pity and patronize the preacher because he is so poor. About the only piety some laymen lay claim to is the fact that they make a show of feeling sorry for the ‘‘ poor half- starved preacher” and on every possible occasion wail over him because he is so badly treated. Dear brother layman, take notice, from one who knows, that all that sob-stuff about the preacher and his 260 THE HIGHEST OFFICE hungry family is out of date. Your attitude of patronizing pity is as Hamlet said about another anachronism, “ a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance.'’ Pray have done with it. No manly preacher appreciates it. The preacher does not want your pity. He wants you to get in the game with him and join him in a manly effort to advance the ball. A preacher with average ability, average training, average piety and average consecration will get at least an aver¬ age living out of his ministry. (b) Intellectual. The preacher has the advantage over others in that, more than men in any other calling, except perhaps a college professorship, he has the opportunity for intellectual pursuits. There are laymen in every community hungering for knowledge but denied the opportunity of pur¬ suing it because of the time consumed by the petty details of earning a living. Such men would be almost willing to pluck out the right eye for the preacher’s opportunity of living in the atmosphere of books. This layman usually, not always, makes more money than the preacher, but the preacher will, or may if he will, make more man. My fear is that few preachers properly appreciate this blessing. Have you ever looked out through your study window to see an ambitious young fellow patiently toiling, digging a ditch with a group of uncongenial companions? What would he give, my brother, for your opportunity of fellowship with SOME GLOEIOUS EEWAEDS 261 the great men whose books are on your shelves, but he must dig the ditch that wife and babies may be fed. Have you ever humbly thanked God that the work to which He has called you gives you in this respect such a distinct advantage over most of your fellow-men ? Do you figure that in as one of your assets when you come to consider the rewards of your office? (c) Social. A little while ago a young preacher was a dinner guest in an elegant home along with a group of the leading people of the community. During the social hour, after dinner, he suddenly left the room. His host found him on the back porch weeping. When he could talk he said: “I was comparing my social status before I became a minister with that which is mine to-day, and the facts overwhelmed me. Before I was a minister my social environment was poverty, squalor, ig¬ norance and vice. Since I became a minister the best social life is open to me. The blessing of it melts my heart with gratitude to God.’’ But it is objected that this is an exceptional case—^that most preachers moved in first-class social circles before entering the ministry. The facts justify the con¬ tention. But this admission does not alter the fact ^ thatjthe ministry affords social opportunities not equalled by any other calling. The truth is, that the preacher’s opportunity for congenial social life is so good that it furnishes a constant menace to his ministry—tempting him to employ time in 262 THE HIGHEST OFFICE purely social functions that might be more profit¬ ably used elsewhere. (d) Domestic. The family circle is a charmed zone. Every normal man who has a well-ordered home life appreciates it and is blessed by it. It is the lament of the average business man that he has so little time with his family. Here as elsewhere the preacher has the advantage. While other men are necessarily away from home all day and often part of the night the preacher may and usually does spend much of the daytime at home, the majority of preachers maintaining the private study in the residence, thus enjoying the home atmosphere and at the same time contributing his part toward mak¬ ing it wholesome. Another element of the blessing of his home life is that the preacher’s wife is usually a woman su¬ perior to the average of her neighbours in all the ^ higher home making qualities. If a young preacher does not marry well it is his own fault. ^ As a rule he has the pick of the community in which he lives. Put a young preacher in competi¬ tion for a young woman’s affection with young men of equal ability and attractiveness in other callings, and in three cases out of four the preacher will walk off with the prize. After writing this last sentence I read it to a young lady in my office and asked her if she believed it to be true and if so why it is true. She said she believed it to be true ^ and that\the reason for it is that the very nature SOME GLOEIOUS EEWAEDS 263 of the young preacher’s calling implies that his character has been tested and approved. The very fact that he has been ordained a preacher is a pretty safe guarantee that he is a man of good record, stable character and high ideals. Another reason not mentioned by her is that as a rule a young woman is altruistic in her thinking and she feels that to marry a preacher would give her the best opportunity of serving others. Whatever the philosophy of it, the fact remains that as a rule the preacher’s home is blessed above others with a woman peculiarly qualified for the high office of wifehood and motherhood and home maker. A Roman Catholic author says, “ Be it ours, therefore, to love the people. Is it not to that end that we have no family ties? Yes, I invoke pity for the people; pity for their sufferings, their miseries, their prejudices, their deplorable subjec¬ tion to popular opinion, their ignorance, their er¬ rors. Let us, at least, try to do them good—to save them. Therein lies our happiness; we shall never have any other. All other sources are closed to us; there is the well-spring of the most delectable joys. Apart from charity, what remains? Vanity, unprofitableness, bitterness, misery, nothingness.” Hear his wail ‘‘ We shall never have any other! ” Commenting on this utterance, Hoppin says: “ These words, though evidently the words of a noble man, have a sad tone, as if the ‘ bitterness and nothingness ’ had been experienced because the 264 THE HIGHEST OFFICE writer^s heart had been closed, by the unscriptural imposition of celibacy, to domestic joys and af¬ fections; and the argument itself by no means holds good, that because a man has no wife and children to love, he will more readily love the people, since he has nothing else to love. But he has something else to love; that is, himself, or a phantom of the church which he has created, and which is another name, in many instances, for a sanctified love of power, an ambition to embody in himself the Church’s power. He who happily sustains the married relation is in the best school on earth to learn unselfishness—the unselfish love of all. He is drawn out of himself; he must think of others; he cannot be absorbed in his own plans; his best affections are constantly moved upon, and they have no time to stagnate.” De Tocqueville, that astute French political philosopher, says: “I do not hesitate to say that the women give to every nation a moral tempera¬ ment which shows itself in politics. A hundred times have I seen weak men show real public vir¬ tue because they had by their sides women who supported them, not by advice as to particulars, but by fortifying their feelings of duty, and of directing their ambition. More frequently, I must confess, I have observed the domestic influence gradually transforming a man naturally generous, noble, and unselfish, into a cowardly, commonplace, place-hunting self-seeker, thinking of public busi- SOME GLOBIOUS EEWAEDS 265 ness only as a means of making himself comfort¬ able, and this simply by contact with a well-con¬ ducted woman, a faithful wife, an excellent mother, but from whose mind the grand notion of public duty was entirely absent/’ A distinguished American author says: The sympathy of a true Christian wife to a minister in his work is something more than common friend¬ ship ; it is the loving support of a heart true to the divine Master in hours of human suffering and trial—in times when the spirit of a strong man bows itself, and when there is no other earthly friend to whom he would reveal his mental weak¬ ness and anguish.” The author of the “ Recreations of a Country Parson,” having been hindered in preparing a ser¬ mon by the frequent interruptions of his little child, says: “ My sermon will be the better for all these interruptions. I do not mean to say that it will be absolutely good, though it will be as good as I can make it; but it will be better than it would have been if I had not been interrupted at all. The Roman Catholic Church meant it well, but it was far mistaken when it thought to make a man a better parish priest by cutting him off from do¬ mestic ties, and quite emancipating him from all the worries of domestic life. That might be the way to get men who would preach an unpractical religion, not human in interest, not able to com¬ fort, direct, sustain through daily cares, tempta- 266 THE HIGHEST OFFICE tions, and sorrows. But for the preaching which will come home to men’s business and bosoms, which will not appear to ignore those things which must, of necessity, occupy the greatest part of an ordinary mortal’s thoughts, commend me to the preacher who has learned by experience what are human ties, and what is human worry ? ” But not only is the preacher’s domestic circle blessed in the person of his wife, but, the quite general impression of the superficial observer to the contrary notwithstanding, the preacher’s home life is blessed in the character of his children. The impression that preachers raise bad boys grows out of the fact that if a bad boy does happen to be a preacher’s son everybody in the county knows it and talks about it, while if a man in any other call¬ ing has a bad boy it creates no surprise and there¬ fore evokes no comment. If any man will examine carefully ‘‘ Who’s Who in America,” (a work giv¬ ing brief biographical sketches of outstanding men in American history) he will find that in propor¬ tion to numbers preachers have two sons in that list where men of any other calling have one. Take almost at random the following names from the great world of achievement in literature, science, business, politics, and religion: Joseph Addison, S. T. Coleridge, Wm. Cowper, Ben Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Alfred Tennyson, James Russell Low¬ ell, Christopher Wren, Matthew Arnold, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Wm. Hazlett, Geo. Bancroft, SOME GLOEIOUS REWAEDS 267 ^ Froude, Parkman, Emerson, Henry Clay, Edward Everett, Kingsley, Mark Patterson, Wm. Stead, F. B. Morse, Cyrus W. Field, Chester A. Arthur, Levi P. Morton, Grover Cleveland, Lorimer of the Saturday Evening Post, Henry Ward Beecher, Jonathan Edwards, Canon Farrar, A. P. Stanley, Robert Hall, Norman McLeod, R. S. Storrs, Ly¬ man Abbott, H. J. Van Dyke, Marcus Dods, C. H. Spurgeon. Trace their genealogy and you will find that they are all ministers’ sons. To come a little closer home and take the names of men personally known to most of the people who will read these lines: B. H. Carroll, R. C. Buckner, E. Y. Mullins, S. P. Brooks, C. C. Slaughter, L. R. Scarborough, O. S. Lattimore, Fred Freeman, J. M. Carroll, R. H. Coleman, and so on ad infinitum are the sons of ministers. While I write two men are candidates for Governor of my native state—^both of them the sons of preachers. At the same moment two men are candidates for President of the United States —one of them is the son of a Baptist, the other of a Presbyterian minister, and by the way one of these men is a Baptist deacon, the other a Presby¬ terian elder. More than most men the preacher seems to have adopted as the motto of his home life Froebel’s saying: “ Let us live for the children,” and he reaps the reward of faithfulness at this vital point. In the mouth of a preacher nothing could be more 268 THE HIGHEST OFFICE tragic than the wail in Canticles 1:6:“ They have made me a keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept.” Occasionally the preacher is guilty of the travesty on personal re¬ sponsibility by giving himself to public service to the neglect of the preeminent duty of rearing his own family. There could be no greater folly and no more unspeakable tragedy. 2. Spiritual Rewards, {a) Consciousness of usefulness. In any calling a man worth the name desires to be useful. In any legitimate calling the man who has the heart for it can make himself a blessing to the world, but it goes without saying that the preacher at this point has the advantage over all his brothers. In the first place this is true because of the very na¬ ture of his work. He works in the highest sphere of human life. That man is indeed a benefactor who makes two blades of grass grow where one originally grew. He is a benefactor who furnishes food and clothing for the human body. He is a benefactor who calls out and develops the latent powers of the human mind. But he is the highest benefactor who is permitted to give himself to the care of human souls,-^who labours among men in the realm of the spiritual. What an appeal this fact makes for diligence and tact and consecration. How it challenges the preacher to put into his min¬ istry the best powers that he has or that he may, by a life wholly devoted to it, acquire. Oh! men of SOME GLOEIOUS EEWAEDS 269 God, shepherds of souls, when we remember the exalted task that is ours how can we be sluggards or slackers I But the preacher is conscious of his usefulness not only because of the nature of his work but be¬ cause of gracious results he is often permitted to see growing out of his work. Looking back over his life the faithful minister sees the fruit of his labour in the many who have been led to Christ under his ministry; in the churches that have been planted and developed under his pastoral care; in communities that have been, under his leadership, lifted to higher planes of living; in altruistic move¬ ments that have been fostered and nurtured by his hand; in the wayward who have been reclaimed and the weak and dejected who have been steadied and heartened. Such rewards are worth to him more than gold, yea than much fine gold. (&) Yet another spiritual reward that comes to the preacher is that more than other men he has the privilege of living in a high and holy atmosphere. A distinguished lawyer said to me not long since: “ You preachers have an advantage over us law¬ yers. In our business we see human nature at its worst while in yours you see it at its best.’’ Grant¬ ing that he did not realize how much of the bad side of human nature the preacher sees, it must be admitted that there is truth in his statement. More than other men the preacher is associated with the best elements in the community. Who 270 THE HIGHEST OFFICE can measure the blessings that come to him from such associations? But association with good people is not the chief element in the high and holy atmosphere in which he lives. Far more potent than this is the fact that in his thought-world he deals with the high and holy. The very nature of his duties leads him to consider the holiest things. In his studies he lives in that atmosphere. In his ministrations whether in the pulpit or in pastoral visitation sacred things are preeminent. If he even measurably meets the demands of an ideal ministry his mind is saturated with the things of God. The truth is he lives in such constant touch with holy things that his great danger is that in his thinking they shall lose their holy aroma. Living in the atmosphere of these sacred things so constantly he is in danger of deal¬ ing with them in a purely professional spirit. The preacher is in a bad way when in his thinking holy things become commonplace and when the sacred functions of his office are performed mechanically. I have known sonie ministers who seemed to have degenerated to that low level, but as a rule the preacher’s soul is enriched by the consciousness that he is ministering in holy things and his life is ennobled by this romantic truth. (c) But a third spiritual reward is that more definitely than men in other callings the preacher has the promise of the presence of Jesus as he works. “ Lo, I am with you alway ” is a promise SOME GLOEIOUS EEWARDS 271 made specifically to the man who preaches the Gospel and performs the duties of that high office. Every child of God yearns for the divine presence as he goes about his tasks. Indeed every child of God may have a consciousness of that presence, but to none is the promise of it made quite so definitely as to the preacher. Not only is this con¬ sciousness of the presence of Christ an immeasur¬ able help to him in his work but it is a thing of real value in his life. To the right sort of preacher the promise of Christ’s presence is a thing to be treas¬ ured among his most priceless jewels. {d) Not the least of the preacher’s rewards is in the fact that when he comes to the end of the journey there will be a host of people who have been blessed by his ministry to bid him an affection¬ ate good-night ” as he slips into the shadow that we call death, and a still larger host to bid him a glad good-morning ” as he emerges into the glorious light on the other side. In a lonely grave at the foot of the Apennines lies the body of a mountain guide. On a rude stone at the head of the grave is the inscription: ‘‘ He was a good man and a good guide.” What nobler compensation for a life of service and per¬ haps of sacrifice could a preacher have than that some such thing should be said of him when he has “ crossed the bar ” ? God help you, my young brother, that you may indeed be a good man and a good guide. XIV THE BISHOP-COADJUTOR OF THE OFFICE Help these women for they laboured zvith me in the Gospel” — Philippians 4: 3. O UR Episcopal brethren have an officer whom they style Bishop-Coadjutor/^ The difference between the Bishop-Co¬ adjutor and the ordinary assistant to the Bishop is that the latter functions only in temporalities while the Bishop-Coadjutor officiates in both temporal and spiritual matters. The minister’s wife is the God-given Bishop-Coadjutor; she assists him both temporally and spiritually. Since she performs the duties of this office I see no reason why she should not receive the titles. “ Therefore be it known by these presents,” that in my thinking, every faithful wife of a minister is hereby designated, appointed and set apart to the high office of Bishop-Coadju¬ tor. Turning back to a thoroughly serious vein, per¬ mit me to say that I should count these lectures in¬ excusably incomplete if we did not give some con¬ sideration to the minister’s wife by way, at once, of tribute, encouragement and instruction. 272 THE BISHOP-COADJUTOK 273 Dr. R. C. Burleson was wont to say in a some¬ what jocular way that the devil had a spite against preachers and often paid them off in silly or in¬ competent wives. Like David when he averred that all men were liars, I think the dear Doctor was speaking in haste. A little deliberation would doubtless have compelled him to admit that preach¬ ers, for the most part, have been singularly fortu¬ nate in their wives. There are painful exceptions, to be sure, but generally speaking the “ Mistress of the Manse ’’ is the uncrowned queen among the women of her community. This is not the occa¬ sion to pronounce a fulsome eulogy on woman in general nor the minister's wife in particular. The truth is, though our writers and speakers seem not to know it, woman neither needs, nor desires, nor enjoys that sort of pabulum. She only asks op¬ portunity and encouragement to do her part in the world's work. Like other human beings, she en¬ joys recognition, approval, appreciation, but more than most human beings she will go on faithfully in her work even when these are withheld. A pulpit committee conferring with a prospective pastor asked about his wife. The somewhat sensi¬ tive preacher said, “ You are not thinking of call¬ ing my wife, are you?" Whereupon one of the committee replied, “ No, we ain’t goin' to call her, but if we call you she’s a-goin’ to come." Properly mated, a woman is always interested in the plans and tasks and ambitions of her husband. It is on 274 THE HIGHEST OFFICE this psychological basis that the minister’s wife will be more interested in church work than other even devout women of the community. It is her quasi official connection with the church and the pastor¬ ate that justifies the introduction of this chapter in a book on the pastoral office. In these days much is being said about woman and her relation to the world’s work. The once quite prevalent notion that she is mentally inferior to man has been abandoned. Her capacity and her right to vote, hold office and perform any of the public functions hitherto discharged exclusively by men, is coming to be quite generally conceded. No longer a question of capacity, the problem now is how far it is right and expedient for her to go in filling public places and discharging public and of¬ ficial functions. The scope of this lecture will not permit us to go into the general questions of woman’s rights and privileges in the world of politics and business. So far as the church is in¬ volved in the general question, the Scriptures clearly imply if they do not specifically teach that whatever may be her capacity or inherent right it is not expedient for her to be charged with official position in the church. This remark is not based wholly upon the so-called isolated and provincial statements of Paul but is a conclusion drawn from the entire trend of Scripture teaching. Whatever may be one’s personal opinion, predilection or pref¬ erence, all must admit that the Scriptures do not THE BISHOP-COADJUTOR 275 contemplate and certainly do not provide for a woman filling either of the two official positions of a New Testament church. Her place in the church is clearly recognized and her work in it and for it definitely approved and encouraged, but that she is to fill either of its offices, or perform the official duties thereof is nowhere taught, but the contrary clearly implied. Her only homiletical right to a place in this discussion lies in her vital relation to the one whose office is the subject of these lectures. Let this discussion begin with the consideration of some false attitudes of the church and the public generally toward the minister’s wife. (1) Needless commiseration. Some people think it is pious to pity the preacher’s wife. The following doggerel from the Chicago Record Herald represents a view of her which is ridiculous to be sure, but quite prevalent. Oh, pity the lot of a minister’s wife; It is sinful to be fair; She must not try to seem too sublime for this life, Yet must still have a heavenly air; She must never view others with critical eyes. She is there that the rest may themselves criticise Whatever she does or may wear. If she tries to be humble, her sisters will say She poses and isn’t sincere; If she shows that she’s proud of her prominence, they Cast looks at each other and sneer. 276 THE HIGHEST OFFICE And talk of the folly of one who believes She’s ‘‘ too good for this world, while her husband receives Only four or five thousand a year.” If she seems to be pleased with the sermon, the rest Will think it is all for effect, Yet she must not pretend to indifference lest They may talk of her lack of respect; They call her a frump if her costume is plain. And accuse her of being extravagant, vain. If she dares to be handsomely decked. If she acts like a saint they will say it’s for show, If she doesn’t there’s scandal. Each day She is under the gaze of the high and the low. And though she inspires him, they Regard the poor preacher with pity, they sigh. And whispering sadly, go wondering why He loves her so much, anyway. There is nothing in her relation to the church to justify such a caricature. For her to accept the idea that she is the proper object of everybody’s pity would rob her position of its romance and de¬ throne her noblest ideals. Next to self-pity, covet¬ ing or even tolerating pity from others, is perhaps the most enervating toxine. If she recognizes it and accepts it, it undermines her self-respect. If she recognizes it and resents it, it embarrasses and handicaps her activities. Ostentatious pity for the right-thinking, high-minded pastor’s wife hurts her heart and hinders her work. I THE BISHOP-COADJUTOB 277 (2) Undue exaltation. The other extreme is that which puts the preacher’s wife on a pedestal above other women. People who address other women as “ Mrs.” call the preacher’s wife “ Sis¬ ter.” Knowing that the distinction is fictitious and the making of it often hollow and hypocritical gives her a sickening sense of aloofness. Officially she is neither better nor worse, higher nor lower than other women and she chafes under an obsequi¬ ous effort to apotheosize her. The feeling of aloofness thus generated wounds and handicaps her. (3) Excessive demands. In many churches there is a disposition especially among the women to make a pack-horse of the pastor’s wife. She is perhaps physically frail, the mother of children, financially unable to keep domestic help and yet is expected to teach in the Sunday school, direct the young people’s work, be president of the women’s society, visit the congregation, look after the sick and distressed and perform any miscellaneous tasks that may arise. While she has no official church position and is therefore not formally charged with responsibility above other women, yet being the wife of one who holds the highest official place in the church and whose whole life is given to its service, she would naturally take keener interest and have a larger part in the work of the church than the average woman. Not to do that would mark her a foolish woman. But having cheerfully 278 THE HIGHEST OFFICE made that admission, I wish to enter a protest against the over-exacting demands too often made on her time and strength. If she is not a weak¬ ling to be coddled and pitied; if she is not a queen to be pampered and petted, neither is she a slave to be burdened that others may be eased. But let us next inquire what kind of woman the pastor’s wife ought to be. The Scriptures are si¬ lent on the subject unless (wives) in 1 Timothy 3: 11 refers not only to deacons in verse 8, but also reaches back to bishops in verse 2. In which case it is required that they be sober-minded women, not slanderers, but temperate in every way and trustworthy in all things. Since her qualifica¬ tions are not clearly delineated in revelation we shall seek such help as we may from reason and observation. In view of the work her husband is called to do, what sort of woman should the min¬ ister’s wife seek to be? While this book was brewing Mrs. E. O. Thomp¬ son, along with her preacher-husband, took my course of lectures on Pastoral Theology. During that period she wrote a paper on “ The Minister’s Wife.” I am making some rather copious extracts from her discussion of the qualifications of a min¬ ister’s wife. “ As to what a minister’s wife ought to be, I should say first of all, a woman, every whit a woman, a woman with all the graces of heart, sim¬ plicity of demeanour and earnestness of life that it THE BISHOP-COADJUTOE 279 takes to make a woman. She must cultivate and exemplify to the world in voluntary arts of devo¬ tion that womanliness in which the heart of Christ finds its supremest earthly expression. Abrupt manners, a raspy voice and careless habits discredit any woman and the display of them by a minister’s wife is positively a calamity, because her promi¬ nence exhibits the value of culture and refinement and her position requires the highest personal at¬ tainments. Peevishness and narrow-mindedness are inconsistent with our ideal of womanhood in any sphere and in a minister’s wife they are un¬ bearable, because her example wields a mighty in¬ fluence and her power for good demands breadth of vision and hopeful courage in meeting the trials and petty annoyances of life. So by all means let the minister’s wife cultivate and exemplify all the womanly graces and attractiveness of which she is capable. Besides being a woman of gentle habits and gracious courtesy, the minister’s wife should be an ideal companion for the minister and to do this she must be his compeer physically, intellectually and spiritually. Physically, woman is weaker than man, but this only argues for the care of the bodily temple so that it may be as efficient for a woman’s work as man’s is for his work. Life means joy, vigour and freedom from unnecessary pain and upon the soundness of health and physical fitness of the wife depends much of the minister’s sue- 280 THE HIGHEST OFFICE cess. But not only must a minister’s wife strive to be well, but it is her duty to keep herself as attrac¬ tive and lovable as she was before marriage, in fact it is well not only to abound in this grace but to grow in it also. The minister soon learns that it is much easier to secure a good pastorate than to maintain a good one and just as surely should the minister’s wife realize that if personal attrac¬ tiveness aided in awakening love it will do just as much, if not more, in increasing love. Many a man’s admiration for his wife has been lost by unkempt hair and uncared-for hands and his de¬ votion killed by ill-fitting dresses and soiled ap¬ parel. Costly material is not required, but a little ingenuity and a reasonable amount of care will work wonders and insure the personal attractive¬ ness necessary for perfect happiness and extensive usefulness. '' But companionship does not rest alone on per¬ sonal charms but must be sustained by mental ac¬ tivity and intellectual comradeship. Once upon a time in the far bygone days, men thought that be¬ cause women were the weaker vessel they were also the smaller. In a more recent time they have realized that a fragile china bowl may hold as much as a heavy iron pot. To-day they not only acknowledge the possibility but demand the actual¬ ity. There is no reason why a minister’s wife should not be his intellectual equal, for educational opportunities are as great for her as for him and THE BISHOP-COADJUTOR 281 now special schools are built to train preachers’ wives as well as aspirants for the position. “ But it takes more than personal attractiveness and intellectual equality to produce perfect com¬ radeship. There must be a mating of the spiritual lives. The hearts of the minister and his wife, strangely drawn together, must quicken to the an¬ swering love of Jesus Christ, must dwell continu¬ ally in His presence and trust without reserve in His promise, ‘ Lo, I am with you always.’ ” Having given some time to discussing her quali¬ fications for the task, let us now examine the task itself. What is the minister’s wife to do ? 1. In the first place, barring providential disabil¬ ities, she is to be a mother. It is important that she be a helper to her husband in the public work of the church. But there is a duty more ancient, more honourable and far more important than that. The preacher and his wife are wrong if they suppose that they are called upon to forego the privilege of parenthood that the wife may function unhampered in the public activities of the church. There is no such thing as an official preacher’s-wifedom that precludes the duty, the privilege, and the honour of motherhood. Napoleon, so often wrong, was right when he said, ‘‘ The greatest need of France is mothers.” Cornelia put Motherhood in its right place of honour when she said, “ Call me no longer the daughter of Scipio but call me the Mother of the Gracchi.” On her monument, which stone 282 THE HIGHEST OFFICE may be still seen in the Capitoline Museum at Rome, they inscribed at her request the simple words, Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi.’^ It would have been nice if the Presbyterian minister’s wife sixty years ago could have gone with her hus¬ band to Presbytery, Synod and General Assembly, but it was infinitely better that about that time she should bear and rear Woodrow Wilson. It would have been nice if the Baptist preacher’s wife about that same time could have gone with her husband to Associations and Conventions and read brilliant reports before Women’s Unions, but is it not a thousand times better that she was kept at home to care for her baby whose name was C. E. Hughes? If all preachers’ wives had adopted the growing tendency to enforced barrenness in order that public functions might be discharged, the world would be darker by the absence of such luminaries as Addison, Coleridge, Cowper, Ben Johnson, Goldsmith, Tennyson, Lowell, Christo¬ pher Wren, Matthew Arnold, Holmes, Hazlett, Bancroft, Froude, Parkman, Emerson, Henry Clay, Edward Everett, Kingsley, Mark Patterson, Wm. Stead, F. B. Morse, Cyrus W. Field, Chester A. Arthur, Levi P. Morton, Grover Cleveland, Henry Ward Beecher, Jonathan Edwards, Canon Farrar, A. P. Stanley, Robert Hall, Norman Mc¬ Leod, Richard Storrs, Lyman Abbott, Marcus Dods, C. H. Spurgeon, B. H. Carroll, Woodrow Wilson and C. E. Hughes, for these all were the THE BISHOP-COADJUTOE 283 sons of preachers. They are not samples of one lonesome child in the home but almost without ex¬ ception were one of a goodly group of brothers and sisters. History proves that a well-ordered parsonage affords ideal atmosphere for the growth of stalwart men and queenly women. The world’s loss will be incalculable when the manse no longer rings with the merry shout of the preacher’s chil¬ dren. 2. But a second thing to he said about what the preacher's wife should do is that she should he a home keeper. This does not imply that she should be chained Prometheus-like to the walls of the house in which she lives. It does mean, however, that she should recognize the duty, should be ac¬ corded the right and should be afforded the op¬ portunity of making a home a real genuine home for herself, her husband and her children. We hear some talk of the sacred desk ” and the sanctity of the pulpit. I do not discount the value of these symbols of divine authority when I put the home above them as sources of power or sym¬ bols of holiness. The chivalrous man stands with solemn reverence b}^ the stone that marks his moth¬ er’s grave, and there are blessed memories that make it a sacred spot, but if there is a holy spot on this earth it is a home. To every right-thinking I man home is the holy of holies, where he must walk with uncovered head and feet unsandalled. Who¬ ever through greed or lust or pride or prejudice i j 284 THE HIGHEST OFFICE destroys a home has committed the highest crime. Whoever by selfishness or thoughtlessness mars a home has spoiled earth’s fairest and most fragrant flower. Whoever sacrifices home upon a petty am¬ bition to shine in the world or upon a thought of doing more good in a .supposedly larger sphere prostitutes the oldest, the holiest, the most benefi¬ cent of God’s institutions. Paul was not speaking as a cynical old bachelor but as a wise philosopher and an inspired apostle when he wrote to a young preacher, I will that younger women marry and guide the house.” 3. Blit added to motherhood and home-making, the minister's wife has the duty of helping her hus¬ band in his duties. She will not write his sermons nor drill him in their delivery. She will not make his pastoral visits nor habitually accompany him when he makes them, but she will put forth an unseen but potent hand on these and all his other tasks. Her delicate touch and intuitional inter¬ pretation of trying situations will cover a multi¬ tude of masculine sins. A wise wife often saves the preacher from the blunders of others and more often saves him from his own folly. Some of us preachers are so inherently bent toward blundering that we remind ourselves and all thoughtful ob¬ servers of an ox in a crockery house. But for the chastening, mellowing, restraining, inspiring and usually silent influence of a good wife some of us long ago would have smashed every shelf in the THE BISHOP-COADJUTOE 285 shop. Sometimes when like John Mark, we have lain down in the harness she has, figuratively at least, picked us up and carried us out on her shoul¬ ders. When Guelph of Bavaria surrendered to Conrad III, his wife requested for herself and her lady companions immunity for themselves and whatever they could carry out of the castle. The request being granted all were astonished to see them coming forth bearing their husbands on their backs. Known unto me is the preacher, and his name is Legion, who has ridden into all his noble achievements on the back of a devoted wife. “ Oh! Woman Mother! Woman Wife I Sweetest name the language knows. Thy heart with pure affections rife, Thy bosom with purest motive glows. Thou queen, thou angel of my life. Few are the friends my life hath made. Few are they who in my hand their hearts have laid And these were women. I am old and never yet have I been betrayed.” But the repertoire of the pastor’s wife is not confined to motherhood, home-making and being a silent partner in her husband’s achievements. She has her own definite zvork, a zvork peculiar to her position, a work growing out of her quasi-official connection with the church and a work therefore of such nature that it cannot be done by any other 286 THE HIGHEST OFFICE woman. Now what is to be the nature of her wort in the church ? {a) In the first place, it must not be perfunctory. Like her husband, she is constantly tempted to do her work professionally. She must pray daily for freshness, fervour, spontaneity. Holy spiritual fires must be kept burning in her heart lest her church activities become mechanical. The woman who makes “ pastor’s-wifing ” a pro¬ fession is a very unsatisfactory individual. The woman who is active in the church during her husband’s pastorate but loses all interest when his pastorate ceases is not worth anything now and really was not worth much then. (&) Again, she must not he domineering. She must lead hut not boss and her leadership must he from the rear and not from the front. She must know, and if she does not know she must learn, how to enlist and en¬ courage others. The wisest woman I ever knew always maintained that the pastor’s wife should never be president of the woman’s society. No¬ body ever thought of her as a leader in any move¬ ment. She never held office nor wore any badge of leadership, but she was the dominant spirit among the women in every church where her hus¬ band has been pastor. She gained ascendency by following two maxims,—First, Keep yourself out of sight, and Second, Let all your plans be un¬ selfish. When the women in a church discover that the plans of the pastor’s wife point toward the parsonage or any other personal or selfish end then THE BISHOP-COADJUTOR 287 and there she drops her sceptre of power and can never pick it up. Blessings on the pastor’s wife who is qualified for leadership, knows how to lead from the rear and is willing to lead for the glory of Christ. I bare my head in her saintly presence. The other kind gives me neurasthenia, which being interpreted is nervous prostration. (c) But there is yet another sphere where the pastor's wife may, as such, make herself useful — the community at large. She will probably not be a club woman, certainly not a society woman, but even though she is a mother and her husband’s church is large she ought to find some time for lending a hand in enterprises of general community interest. Aside from the specific good done, such , activities broaden her sympathies, extend her ac¬ quaintance and enlarge the sphere of her influence. In conclusion, let me give a word of exhortation to my young preacher brothers: See that your wife has a chance to grow while you grow. I am think¬ ing now of a preacher who when an ignorant boy married a noble but uneducated girl. Afterwards called to preach, the churches took him up and edu¬ cated him. In middle life he is an educated, cul¬ tured gentleman. With little opportunity and per¬ haps no encouragement for self-culture the wife has remained a noble but ignorant woman. Worse than that, she is a heart-broken woman because she feels herself to be a millstone about her husband’s neck. Worse than all that, the work of the King- 288 THE HIGHEST OFFICE dom is hindered because even the trained pastor cannot do his best with such a handicap. I am a sentimental believer in love, even in love at first sight, in the irrevocable, once for all, divinely or¬ dered mating of souls. I am, therefore, against the preacher who selects a wife as he would pick a horse, because he thinks she has qualities fitting her to the job of preacher’s wifedom. When as a youth they told me that a given young woman would make a fine preacher’s wife, I always let her alone. I was not hunting for a woman to take a job—to fill a position. I was waiting for some one to come my way, whether Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, whose soul would respond to my own —and thank God she came. The brethren feared, not entirely without ground, that she would not make a good pastor’s wife. But thank God she did. But having in all sincerity said all this, let me further say that the beginning and perpetuity of this mating of souls is based not on physical charms but on intellectual and spiritual comrade¬ ship. If woman and man do not grow together mentally and spiritually this soul harmony is marred and all the romance is gone out of life. Take the romance out of life and it is a desert— stale, flat and unprofitable. Therefore, give the young preacher's wife a chance to grow even as her husband grows. Frinted in the United States of America / a H"? ■>^ I / 5 i ' ’ . \ 'St ‘ I Date Due