lue change
and emphases shift, within the calling itself, with our changing
civilization. The mediaeval world brought forth, out of its need, the
robed and mitered ecclesiastic; a more recent world, pursuant to its
genius, demanded the ethical idealist. Drink-sodden Georgian England
responded to the open-air evangelism of Whitefield and Wesley; the
next century found the Established Church divided against itself
by the learning and culture of the Oxford Movement. Sometimes
a philosopher and theologian, like Edwards, initiates the Great
Awakening; sometimes an emotional mystic like Bernard can arouse
all Europe and carry men, tens of thousands strong, over the Danube
and over the Hellespont to die for the Cross upon the burning sands
of Syria; sometimes it is the George Herberts, in a hundred rural
parishes, who make grace to abound through the intimate and precious
ministrations of the country parson. Let us, therefore, devote this
chapter to a review of the several aspects of the Christian ministry,
in order to set in its just perspective the one which we have chosen
for these discussions and to see why it seems to stand, for the
moment, in the forefront of importance. Our immediate question is,
Who, on the whole, is the most needed figure in the ministry today?
Is it the professional ecclesiastic, backed with the authority and
prestige of a venerable organization? Is it the curate of souls,
patient shepherd of the silly sheep? Is it the theologian, the
administrator, the prophet--who?

One might think profitably on that first question in these very
informal days. We are witnessing a breakdown of all external forms of
authority which, while salutary and necessary, is also perilous. Not
many of us err, just now, by overmagnifying our official status.
Many of us instead are terribly at ease in Zion and might become less
assured and more significant by undertaking the subjective task of
a study in ministerial personality. "What we are," to paraphrase
Emerson, "speaks so loud that men cannot hear what we say." Every
great calling has its characteristic mental attitude, the unwritten
code of honor of the group, without a knowledge of which one could
scarcely be an efficient or honorable practitioner within it. One of
the perplexing and irritating problems of the personal life of the
preacher today has to do with the collision between the secular
standards of his time, this traditional code of his class, and
the requiremen