e splendid in their devotion to truth,
have only their opinion of what is good and true to guide them. Because
they acknowledge no life beyond this one, they become the servants of a
closed system in which injustice frustrates the justice for which they
plead and work. The plight of the humanists is pathetic. Since they
accept no savior, they can draw only on their own human resources, and
are put in the position of trying to lift themselves by their own power.
They can only whistle in the dark. While man apart from God cannot save
himself, God's love for the world works in the world, and He has a part
for man to take. In the relation between God and man, there is need for
both the greatness of God _and_ the greatness of man.

_Dealing with Conflicts_

And so these five frightened friends, familiar types to us all, reveal
to us how easy it is to get lost in our preoccupations and to distort or
diminish the truth we would serve.

Mr. Gates, the minister, has his anxieties, too. He represents the
ordained ministry of the church, which is caught between the demands of
the theory of Christianity and the demands of the world; between the
demands of the pulpit and the demands of the pew; between the church as
an institution and the church as a saving power in the world; between
the surges of the spirit and the sucking drag of tradition. And he
himself is also trapped by the demands of his image of himself as a
minister and the demands of his people's image of him; by the idealism
of his training for the Christian ministry and the realism of the
demands on his ministry in the church and in the world.

He cannot resolve these conflicts by himself, nor should he try. These
are not his conflicts. They are the conflicts of the church's ministry,
and he and the people need to deal with them together. Neither he nor
they will be able to resolve the conflicts, because they are the
inevitable tensions between the spirit and the Law, and between life and
form. But Mr. Gates and all other ministers, together with the rest of
the people of God, by reason of the Christian faith, must live through
these conflicts and deal with them creatively.

Both Mr. Gates and his people need to accept conflicts as an inevitable
part of life, especially of a life that is lived in response to a call
or a loyalty. No growth or learning takes place at any depth without
such conflict: conflict between the known and the unknown, between our
need for s