II QUALIFICATIONS PHYSICAL AND INTELLECTUAL WH HEN, reasoning from the fundamental principles affirmed in the preceding lecture, we attempt to give an account of the qualifications for ministerial power in the present-day life of Protestant America, we require a clear and continuous apprehension of two things, namely, the nature of the call to ministry and the value of personality in ministry. I. The Nature of the Call to Ministry. To those who accept the New Testament declarations concerning the mission and the abiding of the Comforter, none of His manifold operations is more distinctly announced than the call to ministry. Without, on the one hand, offering any comment upon the controversies which have surrounded the subject of ordination and have, to a degree, exalted the objective rite above the subjective call, tempting men to rest in the rite rather than in the call; and without, on the other hand, denying that many examples might be found where a zeal without knowledge has been mistaken for a Divine call; we confidently assert that the calling of individuals by the Holy Ghost unto the ministry of the Risen Lord is one of the most definite of spiritual phenomena. In its nature it is differentiated from that sacred earnestness which is common to all who are truly made alive unto God. It transcends that general sense of holy responsibility which prompts to the manifold forms of lay Christian activity. It is a specific burden imposed by unseen hands upon certain individuals, who, as they become conscious of its existence, awake to the sense of separation unto God for a peculiar and awful form of service. It is most difficult to delineate to those who have not known them the characteristic sensations produced in a human life by this specific action of the Holy Spirit, the commingled awe and joy, the blended loneliness and companionship with God, the unique point of view from which one looks on humanity, the atmosphere of responsibility which envelops life, above all the sense of finality in respect of earthly vocation. He who is thus called of the Spirit feels at times with almost overwhelming distinctness the pressure of a Divine urgency behind his life. To the right or to the left he may not look as containing for him the possibility of other occupation. For him life has but one meaning. "Woe is unto me," he says, "if I preach not the Gospel." He looks upon his life-work not altogether as something which he has selected, but also as something chosen for him and laid upon him by the hand of God. "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you." An awful simplicity of intention pervades his plan of life. Other men are free to choose and to change their occupation; he is separated from the common liberty of choice and sealed for an unalterable destiny upon the earth. Far be it from us to deny that many excellent and single-hearted men have entered the ministry from motives of expediency and preference with which was hardly blended the consciousness of a Divine call. We have no desire to doubt the sincerity of any who have preached Christ. Nevertheless, we believe that they and only they have known or can know that Apostolic sense of "separation unto the Gospel of God" upon whom has been laid the pressure of an unquestionable "necessity," and unto whose spirits has been borne the witness of the Divine Spirit summoning to ministry. This being our view of the nature of the call to ministry, a clear and continuous apprehension of this idea is necessary throughout our present endeavor to delineate the qualifications for ministerial power. 2. The Value of Personality in Ministry. This also must be clearly and continuously apprehended at each stage of our succeeding attempt. It may be said theoretically that the element of personality should be minimized rather than exalted in the office of ministry; that the truth is everything, and the truth-bearer is nothing but a voice and a vehicle. It may be urged in theory that the ideal relationship between people and minister would be one which should attain through mutual effort the annihilation of ministerial personality; that the people should concentrate their attention upon truth as the message of God and lose sight of him through whom that message is conveyed; that the min |