CHAPTER VII

THE TRAINING FOR LEADERSHIP

S moral leadership is the greatest of all callings and the most exacting

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of all work, only the foundation of the most ample and thorough training can support it. Neither this man's own personal greatness, nor the wise application of his religious power, can come out of anything but a deeply laid certitude that the nature and ground of things are in alliance with him. He must know the essential and ultimate facts of the universe. This is theology.

There are many theologies. God is a living God, and so in the founding of a theology, to the authority of the Bible, or history, is to be added the authority of reason

and of personal experience. God spake, but as surely God speaks. The facts of theology are as unchanging as God, but science, the knowledge of facts, comes dressed in new garments with every mental springtide. The great facts of religion abide and change not

the absolute goodness of God; the atonement God makes on account of sin and for fellowship; the resource and deathlessness of the soul; the incarnation of God in human life; the Kingdom of the Spirit; the unity of human kind; the sovereignty of lovethese are ultimate facts. They are witnessed to by the revelation of God in history, especially in the history of Israel and of the Christian Church; they are vindicated to human understanding, and they are the object of the soul's experience.

The Bible will ever remain the text-book of religion; the supremacy of Christ is He is the revelation of God, and the fulfilment of life. But the Bible is not

secure.

the whole of history, and without doubt every religion is offspring of the same brooding Spirit. The thought-forms must in every case be penetrated, that beneath may be discerned the essential truth. The training of the minister in a day when all varieties of religion are in the open and are bidding for allegiance, must include comparative religion. The great test is upon us. The Church is missionary to the world. Christ is to make His way to the throne of the praise of all peoples by His own weightiness. The Church can lead in this only in case the abiding facts are with it.

Theology and philosophy join hands as brethren, for all science, it must be remembered, has attained to majority before the world's understanding, and the day is past when the minister can make headway with theology alone, or if he goes off the great highway. All fact and so all science must be at one in a universe there is no con

tradiction. Sociology and politics and ethics and psychology all have their own authority, and theology runs almost at once into them, and all are strengthened together. The minister is poorly equipped either to master himself or to persuade others, who does not get from these allies their bountiful inspiration; who on the other hand cannot bring to these allies the authority of the Spirit.

The minister, who in a time of great industrial strife, has no command to give, and to the people's perplexity has no word to speak, simply resigns his throne and his Master's. It may be assumed God has a will touching industrial relations, but what if he who is set to speak for God knows not in this time of need what this ongoing universe is pledged to?

Who would lead must know the history of the Church, and have fellowship with its leaders and saints. At their altars he lights his torch. These are they in whom the

passion of God has concentrated, in whom the truth and fellowship of Christ have blossomed into enthusiasm, in whom the Life has come to power. He lives with them, and their faith is begotten in him. The heroes of the Faith are his companions and friends, and the Christ in them wonderfully charms and constrains him. They are incarnation of the worthful things. By manifestation in them the truth commends itself.

Who would lead must know contemporary life the spirit of the times. He must see its drift, that he may take advantage of every current that goes his direction, and give right help where men are overstrained and overcome. He must know the fallacies that prevail over men that he may not beat the air; he must know what allies are in men's souls. His language and forms of thought for the eternal realities must be appropriate. Nothing is quite so pathetic