The Minister and His People: An Address Delivered Before the Students of the Harvard Divinity School in 1884 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Minister and His People: An Address Delivered Before the Students of the Harvard Divinity School in 1884

I cannot begin without congratulating those to whom I speak upon the work which lies before them, and assuring them of the perpetual richness and growing life of that profession in which they are en gaged. I cannot begin without assuring them that everything that is in the promise of that profession is more than realized in the actual Operation of it; and also of my deep conviction that the time has not come, and will never come, when the work of the Christian ministry will be obsolete. I believe that there is every promise of a larger work for the Chris tian minister today than has ever been in the past. Otherwise I should speak in despair, if I spoke _at all.

And yet one of the first things that comes before us, as we think of the work of the theological student and Christian minister, is the great changes that have come in the nature of his work. I am reminded at once, as I begin, of the largely prevailing conception there is of the difference which has come in the relations which the Christian minister holds to his people and to the community. As we look back and see the position which he held fifty years ago, we are constantly reminded of this difference. We arp told a great many anecdotes of the way he stood then, of the prestige which clothed his position, of the author ity with which it was invested. We are then pointed to the great changes that have taken place, in which the minister has been stripped of all that prestige, and has no such authority clothing the utterances which he gives from the pulpit.

There are two ways of regarding that change, both of which I should discourage. One of them is the supposition that there has come to be a lamentable deficiency, a great falling away; that the minister does not occupy that position which he once occu pied. I remember a clergyman who was an old man just at the time when very many who are now be coming old were very young - I remember hearing this remark repeated, which he made to one who' was just going into the ministry: It has been my exceeding good fortune to have my ministry just at the best time. I entered when it was at its highestdegree of prestige, and had the good fortune to leave it just as it lost its prestige and influence. It was not a very cordial word for a young man who was entering it.

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