er before. The Warrior girds
himself and longs eagerly to marshal great, shining, active hosts
for God!

It is true that the conditions of work are more trying than they have
usually been. A man goes out from the seminary. He has had a good
education, followed by perhaps a year or two abroad, and some practical
experience in sociological work. He has plans, ideas, ideals, a vigorous
and whole-souled personality, a frank and generous heart.

What does he find? He soon discovers that the battle is not always to
the strong, the educated, or the well-bred. Too often he is at the mercy
of rich men who can scarcely put together a grammatical sentence; of
poorer men who are, in church affairs, unscrupulous politicians; of
women who carp and gossip; and of all sorts of men and women who desire
to rule, criticise, hinder, and distrain. They, too, are the very people
who, in the ears of God and of the community, have vowed to love him and
to uphold his work! The more intellectual and spiritual he is, the more
he is troubled and distressed.

Many churches, too, are in a chronic state of internal war. As for
these rising church difficulties--try to put out a burning bunch of
fire-crackers with one finger, and you have the sort of task he has in
hand. While one point of explosion is being firmly suppressed, other
crackers are spitting and going off. Whichever way he turns, and
whatever he does, something pops angrily, and a new blaze begins! And
this business, incredibly petty as it is, blocks the progress of the
Christian faith. Men and women of education and refinement, of a wide
outlook and noble thoughts and deeds, are more and more unwilling to
place themselves on the church-roll; a minister sometimes finds himself
in the anomalous position of having the more cultured, congenial, and
philanthropic people of the community quite outside any church
organization.

All these things mean, not that a minister must grow discouraged, but
that he must set his teeth, and with pluck and endurance rise strong and
masterful and say, This shall not be! Let him not listen to the barking
and baying: let him hearken to the great primal voices of man and
nature. Love lies deeper than discord. The constructive forces of
humanity are stronger than the disintegrative. The right
attraction binds.

There are some men who by the sheer force of their personality subdue
their church difficulties. They hold the captious in awe. By a sort of
magneti