The first difficulty which confronts the incumbent of the Lyman
Beecher Foundation, after he has accepted the appalling fact that he
must hitch his modest wagon, not merely to a star, but rather to an
entire constellation, is the delimitation of his subject. There are
many inquiries, none of them without significance, with which he might
appropriately concern himself. For not only is the profession of the
Christian ministry a many-sided one, but scales of value change
and emphases shift, within the calling itself, with our changing
civilization. The mediaeval world brought forth, out of its need, the
robed and mitered ecclesiastic; a more recent world, pursuant to its
genius, demanded the ethical idealist. Drink-sodden Georgian England
responded to the open-air evangelism of Whitefield and Wesley; the
next century found the Established Church divided against itself
by the learning and culture of the Oxford Movement. Sometimes
a philosopher and theologian, like Edwards, initiates the Great
Awakening; sometimes an emotional mystic like Bernard can arouse
all Europe and carry men, tens of thousands strong, over the Danube
and over the Hellespont to die for the Cross upon the burning sands
of Syria; sometimes it is the George Herberts, in a hundred rural
parishes, who make grace to abound through the intimate and precious
ministrations of the country parson. Let us, therefore, devote this
chapter to a review of the several aspects of the Christian ministry,
in order to set in its just perspective the one which we have chosen
for these discussions and to see why it seems to stand, for the
moment, in the forefront of importance. Our immediate question is,
Who, on the whole, is the most needed figure in the ministry today?
Is it the professional ecclesiastic, backed with the authority and
prestige of a venerable organization? Is it the curate of souls,