ABSTRACT
From studying that highest form of human activity, the work of a medical missionary, it seems a sharp descent to the work of the ministry. For it must be admitted that mankind regards with suspicion and dislike the ministers of religion. Ecrasez l’infâme was perhaps the exaggerated Celtic way of expressing the sentiment, but in every country known to us, except perhaps Scotland, the people as a whole look on the priest, the cleric, the minister, as a self-asserting, self-seeking, and possibly self-deluded intruder into the normal life of man. Scotland is a possible exception ; for in that country to be a minister is, or was, the ambition of the strongest and best manhood. Yet even in Scotland, the national poet, Robert Burns, wrote, with general approval, Holy Willie’s Prayer, the most scathing words ever uttered against the spiritual pride and hypocrisy of the clergy. Another great and sincere poet, Robert Browning, has laid bare the godlessness which lurks under the pious garb, in The Bishop orders his Tomb in St. Praxted’s, and the worldliness which has ingenuity of self-defence in Bishop Blougram’s Apology. Indeed, the vices of the clergy have been a never-failing subject of satire. And if the Epistolce Obscurorun Virorum tore the veil from the priesthood before the Reformation, these typical poets of the Reformed Religion remind us that the clerical character is in the public eye a constant and not a variant quantity. And in the world of to-day the clerical profession is at such a discount that even in America thousands of pulpits are empty ; in England there is grave anxiety how the parishes are to be supplied in the next generation ; and the Roman Church only keeps her altars served by taking 79young boys and educating them in the seminaries. In short, this unpopularity of the ministry has reached a point which may have the beneficial result of keeping out of it all who are not brought into it by a Divine mandate.
