voluntary demand for guidance in matters of faith. But now, under the influence of modern conditions of life, the demand for ecclesiastical authority is waning, and the demand for authoritative personality in the ministry is steadily increasing. People desire guidance as much as ever, follow authoritative leadership as gladly as ever. The change is in the character of the authority which is in demand; personal authority is supplanting ecclesiastical authority in public interest. People want leadership: not the leadership of ecclesiastical tradition, but the leadership of personal power in men who speak from knowledge gained through original touch with truth and secret communion with God. 4. Reverence. This, the fourth and last element of that personal power in the ministry which proceeds from experience and devotion, may well conclude our lecture on experiential and devotional qualifications. "I know," exclaimed Westcott, speaking in Durham Cathedral on the Consecration of the Teacher, "I know that we are surrounded by Divine mysteries which the humblest can feel, and that the sense of mystery is the spring of thoughtful reverence, and that reverence is the secret of unfailing strength." The far-reaching wisdom of these words they only can fully apprehend who, like the author of them, have learned through inward illumination and ordination by the Holy Ghost the immensity of Divine Truth, the sanctity of "common life," the awful responsibility of the Christian ministry. He whose inner life is barren of experiences of God, and whose conception of prayer is limited to the outward function, is doomed in time to experience the curse of unspirituality in the decline of reverence. For him, the habit and usage of daily intercourse with the sacred themes of faith will gradually wear off the traditional sense of awe, and leave a familiarity not far from sacrilege. To him the pressure of common life, its care, its ordinary relationships, its temptations, and its pleasures will bring a shabby materialism of thought or the wellbred indifference of a man of the world. Only the maintenance of the esoteric life with its pervading sense of mystery can preserve the existence of reverence. But he in whom exists that mystic life of spiritual communion, to whom the Presence of God is almost more real than physical environment, and the practice of prayer a more intimate companionship than any of the earth, shall carry within his mind, upon his speech, and about his personality that nameless glory of reverence "which is the secret of unfailing strength." When he speaks, men shall hush their voices and hear him, conscious that he speaks in the fear of the Lord; the holy instincts of many shall go out toward him, discerning in him one of the pure in heart who see God, and his power over human souls shall be the greater and the more Divine as it it is seen to be devoid of worldly ambition and consecrated to the interpretation of truth and life. IV QUALIFICATIONS SOCIAL AND PASTORAL WAVING reached this point, a new and extensive H line of thought opens before us, namely, qualifications for ministerial power which involve the application of personality to external conditions. Hitherto we have considered qualifications for ministerial power which involve the development of personality, in its several realms. But the development of personality tends to no practical efficiency apart from correct principles of application. A man may seriously undertake the discipline of personality and may conceivably succeed in bringing each factor of his triune selfhood to a high grade of completeness, but he must coördinate the application of selfhood with the development of selfhood in order to attain practical efficiency. He is in a world exterior to himself, to which he sustains complex relationships. He must investigate these relationships, and learn to apply himself normally through these relationships to the external world. Through inadequate or erroneous applications of personality to external conditions, intrinsically valuable lives may fail to attain efficiency. Admirable men may be wholly unsuccessful through the misapplication of personal power. |