ts of his faith. Shall he acquiesce in the smug
conformities, the externalized procedures of average society, somewhat
pietized, and join that large company of good and ordinary people,
of whom Samuel Butler remarks, in _The Way of All Flesh_, that they
would be "equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted,
or at seeing it practised?" There are ministers who do thus content
themselves with being merely superrespectable. Shall he exalt the
standards of his calling, accentuate the speech and dress, the code
and manners of his group, the historic statements of his faith, at the
risk of becoming an official, a "professional"? Or does he possess the
insight, and can he acquire the courage, to follow men like Francis
of Assisi or Father Damien and adopt the Christian ethic and thus join
that company of the apostles and martyrs whose blood is the seed of
the church? A good deal might be said today on the need of this sort
of personal culture in the ministerial candidate. But, provocative and
significant though the question is, it is too limited in scope, too
purely subjective in nature, to suit the character and the urgency of
the needs of this moment.

Again, every profession has the prized inheritance of its own
particular and gradually perfected human skill. An interesting study,
then, would be the analysis of that rich content of human insights,
the result of generations of pastoral experience, which form the
background of all great preaching. No man, whether learned or pious,
or both, is equipped for the pulpit without the addition of that
intuitive discernment, that quick and varied appreciation, that sane
and tolerant knowledge of life and the world, which is the reward
given to the friends and lovers of mankind. For the preacher deals not
with the shallows but the depths of life. Like his Master he must be a
great humanist. To make real sermons he has to look, without dismay or
evasion, far into the heart's impenetrable recesses. He must have had
some experience with the absolutism of both good and evil. I think
preachers who regard sermons on salvation as superfluous have not had
much experience with either. They belong to that large world of the
intermediates, neither positively good nor bad, who compose the mass
of the prosperous and respectable in our genteel civilization. Since
they belong to it they cannot lead it. And certainly they who do
not know the absolutism of evil cannot very well understa