THE PRESENT TASK of the MINISTRY 
 
 BY 
 
 PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON, LL.D 
 
 Fjartford Seminary press 
 
 HARTFORD, CONN. 
 
THE PRESENT TASK of the MINISTRY 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE 
 
 Seventy-fifth Anniversary 
 
 OF 
 
 HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 BY 
 
 PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON, LL.D. 
 
 Hartford Seminary press 
 
 HARTFORD, CONN. 
 
 1912 
 
THE PRESENT TASK OF THE MINISTRY. 
 
 By President Woodrow Wilson, LL.D. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : I feel that there is a touch of 
 
 temerity in an outsider’s coming to estimate the task of the 
 ministry, and yet I suppose that every profession is best esti- 
 mated from the outside. There is a degree of self-consciousness 
 on the part of those who practice it which prevents their proper 
 estimation of their own service. There is among every consci- 
 entious party of men, perhaps, also, an exaggerated sense of 
 short-coming and of failure, and therefore those who stand out- 
 side of the profession see it more in the mass, can estimate 
 more the net results, overlooking the little discouragements and 
 the details which are seen so clearly by those who are inside 
 the daily life. I had thought that the theme which has just 
 been announced would be an appropriate theme for an occasion 
 like this, because it is natural that a great institution, upon every 
 anniversary of its beginning, should make some sort of esti- 
 mate of what it is that it has done, not only, but of what it 
 intends to do, what its spirit is, and what its purpose must con- 
 tinue to be. 
 
 I suppose that the graduating class today must feel that they 
 are in some sense the mature fruitage of this institution and that 
 it is particularly incumbent upon them to know what they would 
 be about, to know what they would represent, to know what they 
 would try to undertake and attempt in this day, this interesting 
 generation of ours. 
 
 I do not envy the young minister who sets out upon his 
 task in the present age, because I know of no more difficult, no 
 
4 
 
 more delicate, no more tremendous undertaking than his. It 
 is an undertaking to daunt any man who depended upon his 
 own strength to accomplish it. Unless a man goes, in this age, 
 on this errand with the conscious support of the spirit of God, 
 I do not see how he can have the audacity to go out at all. 
 We live in an age when a particular thing cries out to be done 
 which the minister must do, and there is no one else who can 
 do it. A very interesting situation has arisen, intellectually, 
 in our own day. There was a time, not many years ago, marked 
 by an entirely different intellectual atmosphere. There was a 
 time, which we can all remember, when men of science were 
 content, were actually content, with a certain materialistic inter- 
 pretation of the universe. Their antagonistic position with re- 
 gard to spiritual matters was not a defiant position. It was a 
 position of self-assurance and of self-content. They did not 
 look into such matters, because they were convinced that it was 
 vain to look into them, that there was nothing that would come 
 of their examination of the secret motives, of the secret springs 
 of action among men, of the secret source of life in the world 
 itself. But that time has gone by. Even men of science now 
 feel that the explanation which they give of the universe is so 
 partial an explanation, so incomplete an explanation, that for 
 the benefit of their own thought — quite aside from the benefit 
 of their own souls — it is necessary that something should be 
 added to it. They know that there is a spiritual segment in the 
 complete circle of knowledge which they cannot supply and 
 which must be supplied if the whole circle is not to show its 
 imperfection and incompleteness. 
 
 In connection with the administration of universities in our 
 day there is an exceedingly interesting situation in the field of 
 science. It used to be possible to draw sharp lines of division 
 between the several fields of science. But it is no longer pos- 
 sible to do that. The science of physics can no longer establish 
 
5 
 
 a scientific frontier as against the science of mathematics. The 
 science of physics, on the other side, cannot determine with defi- 
 niteness where its jurisdiction ends and the jurisdiction of 
 chemistry begins. Chemistry, on its further borders, cannot 
 clearly discriminate between its field and the field of organic 
 biology. Biology knows that it shades off into that great his- 
 torical biology that lies in the field of paleontology, recorded in 
 the buried records of what the earth’s surface contains. And 
 all of these sciences are aware that, linked as they thus are 
 together, they must have some common principle and explana- 
 tion; that we cannot stop at any frontier because there is no 
 frontier; that the domain of knowledge, like the globe itself, is 
 round and there is no stopping place; that what we have to do 
 is to complete, at whatever cost, the map of knowledge, to press 
 onward into the field where lie the unknown things both of physi- 
 cal knowledge and of spiritual knowledge. 
 
 In other words, we are in the presence of the absolute neces- 
 sity of a spiritual coordination of the masses of knowledge which 
 we have piled up and which we have partially explained, and 
 the whole world waits for that vast task of intellectual media- 
 tion to be performed. Who shall mediate between our spirits 
 and our knowledge? Who shall show our souls the tracks of 
 life? Who shall be our guides, to tell us how we shall thread 
 this intricate plan of the universe and connect ourselves with 
 the purpose for which it is made? 
 
 I do not know who is to tell us if not the minister. I do not 
 know in whom these various bits of knowledge should center 
 and bear fruit if not in him. The world offers this leadership, 
 this intellectual mediation, to the minister of the gospel. It is 
 his if he be man enough to attempt it ; man enough in his knowl- 
 edge, man enough in the audacity and confidence of his spirit, man 
 enough in the connections he has made with the eternal and 
 everlasting forces which he knows to reside in the human spirit. 
 
6 
 
 I believe that we have erroneously conceived the field of the 
 Christian Church in our age. If my observation does not mis- 
 lead me, the Christian Church nowadays is tempted to think 
 of itself as chiefly a philanthropic institution, chiefly an institu- 
 tion which shall supply the spiritual impulse which is necessary 
 for carrying on those great enterprises which relieve the dis- 
 tress, distress of body and distress of mind, which so disturbs 
 the world and so excites our pity, among those men particularly 
 who have not had the advantages of fortune or of economic 
 opportunity. And yet I believe that this is only a very small 
 part of the business of the Church. The business of the Church 
 is not to pity men. The business of the Church is not to rescue 
 them from their suffering by the mere means of material relief, 
 or even by the means of spiritual reassurance. The Church can- 
 not afford to pity men, because it knows that men, if they would 
 but take it, have the richest and completest inheritance that it 
 is possible to conceive, and that, rather than being deserving of 
 pity, they are to be challenged to assert in themselves those 
 things which will make them independent of pity. No man who 
 has recovered the integrity of his soul is any longer the object 
 of pity, and it is to enable him to recover that lost integrity that 
 the Christian Church is organized. To my thinking, the Chris- 
 tian Church stands at the center not only of philanthropy but 
 at the center of education, at the center of science, at the center 
 of philosophy, at the center of politics; in short, at the center 
 of sentient and thinking life. And the business of the Christian 
 Church, of the Christian minister, is to show the spiritual rela- 
 tions of men to the great world processes, whether they be physical 
 or spiritual. It is nothing less than to show the plan of life 
 and men’s relation to the plan of life. 
 
 I wonder if any of you fully realize how hungry men’s minds 
 are for a complete and satisfactory explanation of life? I heard 
 a very pathetic story told the other day about a poor woman, 
 
7 
 
 a simple, uneducated woman, in one of our cities, who had, by 
 some accident, got hold of one of Darwin’s books — I don’t 
 know whether it was the Origin of Species or not — and who 
 had found, even to her unlettered mind, a great revelation in 
 the book, a revelation of the processes of physical life and of 
 the plan of physical existence. She told a friend that it had 
 taken out of her — in her expression — " all the kick there was 
 in her.” She said : “ I don’t find anything in the preaching 
 
 that I hear. It listens good, but it is so soft. It doesn’t seem to 
 give me anything to chaw on. It doesn’t enable me to under- 
 stand what happens to me every day any better than I under- 
 stood it before. It doesn’t even put bread in my mouth or in 
 my children’s mouths. But I read that book and I saw that 
 there was something doing. I saw that there was something 
 going on of which I was a little part, and it has taken all the 
 kick out of me.” 
 
 I believe that her experience is typical of the modern in- 
 tellectual situation. We are infinitely restless because we are 
 not aware of the plan. Just as soon as we are aware of the 
 plan and see that there is “ something doing,” something definite, 
 something to which we are related, even if by mere inexorable 
 necessity, we at least know that it is futile to “ kick,” that it is 
 inevitable that the processes of the gods should be ground out, 
 and that, therefore, the whole operation of life is something to 
 which we may properly relate ourselves if we choose, but must 
 relate ourselves in some fashion whether we will or not. How 
 arid, how naked, how unsatisfying a thing, merely to know 
 that it is an inexorable process to which we must submit ! 
 How necessary for our salvation that our dislocated souls should 
 be relocated in the plan ! And who shall relocate them, who 
 shall save us by enabling us to find ourselves, if not the minister 
 of the gospel? 
 
8 
 
 Shall he stand up in his place of teaching and talk as if 
 there were antagonism between science and religion? If he 
 does, he is taking religion out of the modern mind, for religion 
 cannot remain there if it is antagonistic with science. Religion 
 is the explanation of science and of life, that lost segment of 
 the circle of which I was speaking just now. Think of the 
 knowledge, therefore, with which the minister must equip him- 
 self ! Not at the outset, for that is impossible, but as he grows 
 in power and in his own understanding of the plan of the world. 
 Think what it is that he must do for men ! 
 
 In the first place, it seems to me that he must interpret the 
 plan, not only in terms which will satisfy men of science and the 
 deeper students of theology, but also in terms and from a point 
 of view that will aid the man in the street who can see only 
 a little part of the plan. The minister must seek out for him 
 such part of the plan as can be made visible to his obstructed 
 eye, and lead him on from this little door where he enters the 
 plan to that larger comprehension to which every door which 
 enters the plan at all must ultimately lead. He must show men 
 that there is a plan and he must show that plan to them ultimately 
 in its completeness. 
 
 In that way he must discover for men their spirits. I some- 
 times think that men in our age are either losing their spirits or 
 thinking that they have lost them. It is a very confusing age for 
 a man of conscience. In the modern organization of economic 
 society, for example, no man is a complete whole, every man 
 is a fraction. No man is an integer. His conscience has to 
 reckon out for itself what part the fraction plays in the whole 
 and what possibility of independent action there is for the 
 fraction. The undetachable fraction lies imbedded in the mass 
 and cannot be entirely discriminated from it, and men have 
 allowed their consciences to run down because the mechanism in 
 them seemed to be affected by great magnets outside, which 
 
9 
 
 made it impossible for them to work independently. All their 
 little individual compasses were disturbed by great masses — 
 chiefly of gold, — in their neighborhood, and they have asked 
 themselves how they could disengage their consciences and be- 
 come independent instrumentalities in the sight of God. The 
 task is so tremendous and so perplexing that many men have ad- 
 journed the effort and have decided that all they can do is to 
 drift with the general movement of the mass. They are crav- 
 ing to have someone rediscover their spirits for them. 
 
 Not many men in my hearing profess scruples in respect of 
 their business and occupation; not many men indulge their 
 consciences, and they are a little ashamed of evidences of in- 
 dulging their consciences. Ask the majority of men why they 
 go to church and, if you get the same answer that I get, you 
 will get an answer something like this : that it is decent to go 
 to church ; that it is expected of them to go to church ; more- 
 over that they have lived in that community, men and boys, 
 a great many years, and their fathers and mothers went to the 
 same churches before them; they like to maintain the moral 
 traditions and the vague spiritual connections which go with the 
 habit of attending church. Don't believe a word of it. It is 
 a pure sham. Every man who is not absolutely dried up is kept 
 alive by an inexhaustible well of sentiment. It is the fashion 
 of our age to cover the well over with concrete so that you 
 cannot even see or guess the gleam of the waters, but they are 
 there, creeping up in the soil and maintaining all that produces 
 living fruit. 
 
 What the minister has to do is to blast away these concrete 
 covers and say to men “ Here are the only sustaining waters 
 of life, here is the rediscover}’ of your spirits.” In that wise 
 they must reveal God to men, reveal God to them in their own 
 spirits, reveal God to them in thought and in action, reestablish 
 the spiritual kingdom among us, by proclaiming in season and 
 
IO 
 
 out of season that there is no explanation for anything that is 
 not first or last a spiritual explanation, and that man cannot 
 live by bread alone, cannot live by scientific thought alone; 
 that he is not only starving but that he knows that he is starving, 
 and that digestion of this dry stuff that he takes into his mouth 
 is not possible unless it be conveyed by the living water of the 
 spirit. 
 
 I take that to be a very great and a very difficult task — 
 a challenge to the best things that are in any man. I congratu- 
 late you, young gentlemen, that this is your high and difficult 
 function in life. I beg you not to apologize for the Scripture 
 to any man. I beg you not to explain it away in the presence 
 of any audience, but to proclaim its sovereignty among men, 
 the absolute necessity of the world to know these things if it 
 would know itself. For it is a very significant matter, in my 
 mind, that the gospel came into the world to save the world as 
 well as to save individual souls. There is one sense in which I 
 have never had very much interest in the task of saving in- 
 dividual souls by merely advising them to run to cover. It has 
 never seemed to me that the isolation of the human soul, its pres- 
 ervation from contamination such as the Middle Ages attempted, 
 or any modern substitute for that, was graced with any dignity 
 at all. If men cannot lift their fellow-men in the process of 
 saving themselves, I do not see that it is very important that 
 they should save themselves, because they reduce Christianity by 
 that means to the essence of selfishness, and anything that is 
 touched with selfishness is very far removed from the spirit of 
 Christianity. Christianity came into the world to save the world 
 as well as to save individual men, and individual men can afford 
 in conscience to be saved only as part of the process by which the 
 world itself is regenerated. Do not go about, then, with the 
 idea that you are picking out here and there a lost thing, but 
 go about with the consciousness that you are setting afoot a 
 
process which will lift the whole level of the world and of modern 
 life. 
 
 Until you believe that, there is absolutely no use in your 
 going into a pulpit, you will have to have musical entertain- 
 ments in order to get an audience ; and then I hope you will be 
 distinctly aware that it is the music and not you that brought 
 the people. But if you have something to say to these people 
 that fills you as with a living fire, it will not be necessary to 
 have any music or any cooking classes or any bowling alleys 
 or any gymnastics in order to bring men to the source of the 
 things for which they most long. If you feel this, you can 
 preach in such seething syllables as to make them feel it; and 
 unless you preach in that wise I advise you to go into some more 
 honest occupation. This work in the modem world is assigned 
 to you by invitation, and if you decline the invitation then you 
 have shown that there was some mistake in the address on the 
 envelope. It was not intended for you. It was intended for you 
 only if when it meets your eye your spirit leaps to the challenge 
 and accepts it, as those do who accept the obvious lesson of every 
 impulse that is in them, the very dictate of their conscience. 
 
 And so, standing outside the ministry, longing to see it come 
 to the relief of those of us who undertake the imperfect pro- 
 cesses of education, longing to see the modern world given the 
 privilege of witnessing a day when the human spirit shall come 
 unto its own again, I congratulate you, I welcome you, and 
 above all, I would challenge you to do this high thing in such 
 wise as shall mark the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of this seminary 
 as nothing else could mark it — by taking your part, at any rate, 
 in giving to the world the vision of God which it was intended 
 to exhibit.