ticipates heavy interest returns from its invest ment. It is not for the best interests of either the ministry or the church to maintain such conditions that the chosen leaders of God's holy work should enter upon their careers harassed with visions of debts that they cannot pay, or with lowered nervous vitality consequent upon overstrain in supporting themselves, entirely, during the period of education. Ministers are the officers of the church army. As the nation deems it wise to support and direct the training of the officers of its army and navy, so the church of Christ calling its young men and women to its special service, and establishing for them high standards of discipline and culture, can do no less than aid them in meeting its require ments. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the CHAPTER VI THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE MINISTRY From the business standpoint, the church is probably the greatest industry ever developed by mortal man. There is more capital invested in it, more workers engaged in advancing its interests, and its concerns are more widespread than any other enterprise that men have undertaken. Its achievements have been so numerous and varied that we are confronted everywhere by its benefits; and the unprejudiced observer soon comes to feel that practically everything essential to happiness in modern civilzation owes its debt to the church of Christ. This great, going business, unctioning in so many ways, in so many parts of the world, began in weakness nineteen hundred years ago, and has come to its present status only through self-sacrificing service upon the part of its adherents. The church has been conceived of, sometimes, as a field for service, but it is rather a force for service, an army marshaled to succor a world in need. As the leaders of this force, the ministers have always borne burdens, assumed grave responsibilities, and challenged opportunities. But no generation of the past has offered so many open doors to the consecrated clergyman, or so sorely needed his ministration as the present age. us. The old opportunities for the demonstration of the power of ministerial leadership are still with The rural communities with their decaying churches; the city with its crowding populations; the immigrant with his strange tongue and alien ideal; the child problem; and the labor problem; and the divorce problem; and a dozen other such questions of long standing still send out their ringing challenge to the church and its leaders. But the world has been passing through a strange and terrible experience these last few years; the fountains of life have been broken up, the bulwarks of society have been overthrown, and cruelty and lust and hate have overwhelmed great masses of the race. The world has been surprised in its self-confidence, foolish pride, and undue elation over its progress in material things. The world boasted of its conquests and culture, and in that very moment, the leaders of its intellectual life, the organizers of its industry, the captains of its scientific adventures were seized with madness, and plunged it into a maelstrom of hate and destruction. Out of the terrors of the world war the nations have emerged with minds bewildered by conflict, hearts torn with anguish, and hands blindly reaching forth after guidance. New tasks face the minister, for he must be the interpreter of these experiences to men. As exPresident Wilson said in one of his great addresses, "The business of the Christian church, of the Christian minister, is to show the spiritual relations of men to the great world process, whether they be physical or spiritual. It is nothing less than to show the plan of life and man's relation to that plan." In this interpretation of the plan of the ages and the mediation between the world and its bewilderments, between men and their woes, the minister has a veritable sea of sorrows to assuage. America has not really tasted the bitter cup that has been pressed to the lips of the nations. Her territory has not been ravaged, her homes have not been destroyed, her sons and daughters have not been slain till the wombs of the mothers could not supply the demand for sacrifices. Europe, however, knows all the bitterness of these sorrows as she contemplates her childless homes, her countless crosses on Flander's Fields, and her hosts of maimed and blind and sick. At the meeting of the National Federation of Churches in Boston in the autumn of 1920 the Secretary of the Federation stated that "if the dead of France could be marshaled twenty abreast it would take them eleven days, marching day and night, to pass a given point; if to the dead of France could be added the dead of the other nations, it would require three months to pass; if to this mighty procession could be added the maimed and blind and those incapacitated for life's work, the line would be marching from now (from the time of the meeting) till the roses bloom in the spring." The world is indeed treading the winepress of |