The Case of the Ministers

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

To me, also, ’there has always been something pathetic about clowns.’ Consequently, when I read this sentiment in the opening sentence of Contributor’s article, I leaned back in my chair, lighted my pipe, and said to myself, ‘Here is an article by one to whose spirit my spirit is kin.’ But the very next sentence set me to doubting the kinship. While I agree with Contributor that clowns are pathetic creatures, I cannot agree that the circumstance in their lives which he selects as most pathetic, is pathetic at all — namely, ‘that they are compelled to make their living by means of laughter.’ The clown is a free agent. He may leave off his clowning any day he chooses, and make his living by vending pop-corn or painting steeples. It is not by compulsion, but of choice, that he makes his living ‘ by means of laughter.’ Nor is it by his own laughter that he makes his living. Who ever heard a clown laugh? It is enough for him to squeak and his audience shouts with laughter — that ‘unenforced laughter’ which Contributor values so highly. Having heard such laughter myself, I wonder that any one can call it ‘a capricious thing’ or ‘one of the delicious “extras” of life.’ To my mind, this unenforced laughter is far more pathetic than the enforced squeak of the clown. The really pathetic element in a clown’s life is, that he, being a man, freely chooses to make his living by squeaking.

But, to take the step from the ridiculous to the sublime, let us consider ‘ the case of the ministers.’ Their case is pathetic, so Contributor holds, in two respects. First, they are ‘forced continually . . . to exploit their own spiritual nature in the earning of their daily bread,’ and secondly, they are ‘compelled by their job to make a prayer at the stroke of an hour, even if they do not feel prayerful.’ It is incomprehensible to me (not knowing Contributor) how any intelligent being could misunderstand so utterly ‘the case of the ministers.’ Far from being compelled to exploit their spiritual nature, they may not even do so of their free choice. A minister who did exploit his spiritual nature — that is, utilized it for selfish ends — would soon find himself without a spiritual nature to exploit. Every minister, however, is under compulsion to utilize his spirit ual nature. Every man of us is under this compulsion. Spiritual capacities, quite as much as intellectual or other capacities, must be developed through use, and may be extirpated by disuse. His case is pathetic, and his only, who feels himself under no compulsion to use, and to use freely, his spiritual powers. The command of the Great Teacher is the command of Nature: Let your light shine. He who fails to obey that command, and hides his light under a bushel, not only withholds his light from others, but lives himself in darkness.

‘There is one thing,’ says Contributor, ‘to which . . . every one has a right, and that is, the possession of his own depths of selfhood.’ I deny that right to any man. The depths of one’s selfhood no one of us has developed by his own unassisted endeavors. The deepest depth of it is the gift of God to any one of us, and the lesser depths have been opened up and plumbed for us by the achieving and the failing, by the glory and the shame, by the rejoicing and the sorrowing, by the strife and the peace of others. The depths of our selfhood are not our own. They have been bought with a price — with a price which should bring every one of us to his knees in his hours of remembrance. But this depth of selfhood ‘is sacred,’ says Contributor. Precisely so. And just because it is sacred we have no right to possess it — to shut it up in a private chamber to which we may go to commune with it in some capricious hour when the moonlight falls in just the right slant upon the garden wall, and the apple-blossoms drop quietly upon the lawn.

The second pathetic element in the lives of ministers is that they are ‘compelled by their job to make a prayer at the stroke of an hour, even if they do not feel prayerful.' In this statement is the same utter misunderstanding of the real case of the ministers, and of the laws of the spiritual life. Contributor apparently knows nothing of the drawing power, the appeal, of the situation which presents itself at the stroke of the hour. I can conceive a minister entering his pulpit on occasions in unprayerful mood. Once there, however, looking into the faces of the waiting congregation, knowing the grief which is shutting out the light of God’s love from the heart of the good woman in the front pew, knowing the conflict of higher and lower elements in the nature of the fine-spirited young man in the gallery, knowing the spiritual emptiness of the life of the prominent citizen in the middle pew, knowing the spiritual fullness of the life of the ‘mother in Israel’ in the pew under the gallery, knowing that every person before him is a child of God, a spiritual offspring of the Infinite Spirit, I cannot conceive of a minister whose heart could be unresponsive to these appeals, from whose heart the prayer would not instantly leap: ‘Unworthy though I am to minister to these people, use me as Thou canst to meet their needs in this hour, and give me grace to live more worthily henceforth, that henceforth I may more worthily serve.’ I can no more conceive how one could be insensible to the drawing power of that situation which presents itself to every minister ‘at the stroke of an hour,’ than I can conceive how one, apparently so unaware of the real nature of that situation, would venture to publish his opinions concerning it.

I think I would have knocked the ashes out of my pipe and made a few parish calls after finishing Contributor’s article, if his concluding remarks had not caused the blood to leap into my face, and my hand to reach quickly for a pen. (I am willing to confess, now, that in that moment of shame and indignation I would rather have reached for that instrument which is less mighty than the pen.) ‘Love’ and ‘friendship,’ Contributor makes analogous to ‘the spiritual nature’ which a minister is compelled to draw upon at the request of any one upon whom he calls. The analogy will hold good, but in holding good it refutes the very argument which it is made to illustrate. What kind of love, what kind of friendship, is that which cannot be counted upon and drawn upon at any moment, under any circumstances, by the loved one or the friend? What kind of love, what kind of friendship is that which habitually withholds itself from the loved one or the friend, and chooses to give of itself only ‘as a capricious thing,’ as ‘one of the delicious “extras ” of life’? From such love, from such friendship, ‘let every one I love be delivered! Let him work hard—break stone, dig ditches, what you will’ — but let him not be without friends whose friendship can be relied upon at whatever moment, in whatever circumstance, it is needed; and let no one of them be without one loved and loving one whose love is ever ready to give of itself unsparingly.

But this final analogy — what under the circle of the heavens could have prompted it? — this likening of a minister, giving freely of his powers, to ‘the court favorite, paid for his devotion, the lover or the mistress paid for their favors, compelled to render them without regard to the spontaneous impulse behind them.’ To such an analogy I cannot reply. That sort of utterance must be met with silence. At the other end of the world is to be found the true analogy to the minister supported by a parish in order that he may minister to the religious life of the parish. That analogy is found in the wife, supported by her husband, in order that she may fulfill the functions of her life, and that together he and she may live more fully and more richly and more unselfishly than either could live alone. The minister is no more paid for his spiritual ministry than the wife is paid for her ministry of love. Both are given material support in order that they may fulfill the high callings unto which they both are called. We, who have made the ministry our calling, have not done so with the desire of being ministered unto — certainly not with pity — but in the hope that with God’s gracious favor it might be our privilege to minister unto others.