enlied, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Herbert,
Tennyson, Browning, Dante and Christina Rossetti, Whittier, Lowell,
Longfellow, to say nothing of Goethe, Corneille, and the Greek, Roman,
Persian, Egyptian, Hindu, and Arabian verse.
In music his heart should wake to the beauty of oratorios, symphonies,
chorals, concert music, national and military music, and inspiring
songs, not to speak of hymns and of anthems, the progress of Christian
song! The _Creation_, the _Messiah_, the _Redemption_, Bach's _Passion
Music_, the _St. Cecilia Mass_, Spohr's _Judgment_, Stainer's
_Resurrection_, the _Twelfth Mass_, Mendelssohn's _Elijah_,--these are
monumental works and themes.
What is a hymn? We think of it as being some simple churchly words, set
to a serious tune. A hymn is the rhythmic aspiration of the race. No one
can look through a good hymnal--through _Hymns Ancient and Modern_, for
instance, or the Church Hymnary--without feeling that therein is bound
up the devotional life of the world. The spiritual outlook is cosmic.
Our every mood of penitence, praise, and aspiration resounds in
melodious and time-defying strains.
In art, the religious spirit broods over the great work of the world. In
Angelo, Francesca, Veronese, Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, Tintoretto,
and Correggio, the brush of the painter has set forth the adoration of
the Church of God.
Thus, taken all in all, to be educated as a minister should be to be
educated in the Higher Life of the race.
Finally, above all else is the spiritual study and interpretation of the
Word of God. A minister may be fearless of the investigations of
scientific criticism. Every truth is important to him, but not all
truths are vital. When a man such as Caspar Rene Gregory speaks,
something of the holy mystery and inspiration of biblical research, as
well as a scientific result, is presented, and one gains a new
conception of what it really means to study and to understand the
Word of God.
Under all is the life of ceaseless and prevailing prayer. By the life of
prayer, many mean merely a way of learning to make public petitions, an
objective appeal to God. The true life of prayer is as simple, as
unteachable, and as vital as the life of a child with its mother--the
little lips daily learning new ways of approach to its mother's heart,
and new words to make its wants and interests and sorrows known.
Prayer is the true World-Power. Just as there are vast stretches in the
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