beforehand at the bare suggestion of a pulpit and a surplice. The idea of being tied down to historic formularies, of going through the same motions year upon year, of asking permission for every innovation, galls an eager spirit. It is part of the Anglo-Saxon blood to seek new continents, to explore the unknown. Show him the land all acquired and carefully parceled and you have smitten him with ennui. The same passion for conquest which has given us our marvelous inventions, our commercial prestige, our national glory fronts the ministry with distrust and dismay. Never until we have conquered by crushing shall we make a great soul content with prayer-books and ministerial motions. Nor does God want "broken spirits" of this sort. What pains Jesus took to save Peter without emasculating him! to use John with his fire! Saul would never have become Paul by mutilation. But the young men who might be ministers have not yet learned these things. And there seems so much apparent repression, such interminable sameness and staleness involved in a ministerial career that an eager soul flinches at the bare suggestion. Peculiarly does he start back from mental bondage. Works such as President White's famous Conflict have left their mark on popular opinion. Rightly or wrongly, the impression prevails that a man must commit intellectual suicide before he can enter the ministry. And too often, alas, has the pulpit staked its crown in a quarrel with the spirit of inquiry. There has been too much declamation, too fiery defending of vacant citadels, too little trust of the harmonies of divine revelation. And these things have been remembered outside the church. They have not been permitted to be forgotten. They are in the popular mind today. Their ghost will not down, however complete our penitence. And they stagger the soul that might otherwise hear eagerly the call divine.

Other hindrances to the ministry might be named: loss of faith in the Bible, the war of sects, the professionalism of preachers, the intolerance of church folks, the paradoxes of divine Providence, and so on through a long list. I may, however, emphasize just one further reason for the present widespread attitude toward the ministry—a lack of definite religious conviction. Ours is an age of fine sentiments. From most unlikely lips have I heard

most canny things avouched. There is a sort of emotional rhapsody which easily passes for spiritual finesse. The huge ground swell of modern materialism easily crests in rainbow sprays of pretty sentiment. Communion with flowers and "wee beasties," the language of sky and hill, the majesty of the mercy of God—these are the themes over which folks go easily into raptures. Ah, but such spirit may be only too shallow and impotent. Gush of emotion is lamentable substitute for the grip of conviction. Not in the titillation of one's poetic mood but in the stirring of the great deeps where conviction is born are preachers made. Nothing less than a fresh sense of the urgency of eternal verities, only a new grasp upon the old lifelines of faith or their equivalent, only a rebirth of the heroic spirit of obligation which gave Paul and Luther, Wesley and Simpson, Moody and Brooks to the world will ever bring adequate reinforcement to the modern pulpit. God must get at grips with man. No man is fit to preach until he feels the "woe" of not preaching. Deep in the chambers of the soul must the issue be fought to a finish. A great soul in the Christian ministry without great conviction is a paradox and a warning. But with the deepening of personal conviction, with the real pressing sense of God, with the inarticulate cry in the soul of a world's sinning and suffering, with joyous consciousness of knowing a message which one's neighbors are needing to hear, most of the other hindrances will vanish. Popular esteem, wages, personal abridgment will bulk small against the weight of a great imperative. There is a pitch of self-devotement at which the soul eagerly counts everything else "but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord." In such heroic mood comes the call to heal souls.

ART. VIII. THE VALUE OF PSYCHOLOGY TO THE MINISTER

THE three most important factors in the professional education of a minister are the knowledge of God, of man, and of the Bible. In a sense these three are one. To know God one must know man and the Bible, and, similarly, to know either of the other two one must know a great deal of both the remaining objects. Of these three fields of knowledge which are vitally important to the Christian minister I propose to discuss the second, namely, the knowledge of man. And lest there should be misunderstanding it must be stated that the theme is not man as a physical creation, and not man as an individual unit in the mass of humanity, but rather man as an individual spirit, a self, an I, a mind. Psychology tells us of that which is the "man himself." The minister's task relates precisely to that same subject. He is to be the agent in saving and building up the "man himself." How important this factor is in the total man the New Testament appropriately emphasizes: What shall a man give in exchange for his "self"? What will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his "self"? From two different standpoints the minister and the psychologist approach the same subject-the former studies that he may serve, the latter studies that he may know. And if the psychologist has surely ascertained conclusions as to the nature and functions of the soul, we may be sure that the wise preacher will appropriate these conclusions, that he may render a wiser and more adequate service to the souls or selves of men within the range of his opportunity. Psychology tells us what the soul is by making clear to us what the soul does. We all have souls, as anyone knows who speaks of his "self"; a something which is very different from and superior to his body. But to have a soul does not at all imply a knowledge of what a soul is, any more than to have a body implies a knowledge of the body. Quite true it is that ordinary people know enough of body and of soul for ordinary purposes, but when it comes to the "cure" of either bodies or souls no sensible individual ought to be satisfied with such limited

practical knowledge as the dullest mortals may, and perhaps do, possess. It is a truism that where important interests are involved those having such interests in their care must have as complete and exact knowledge of that which is committed to them as it is possible to obtain. The maxim is beyond challenge that service is ordinarily proportioned to the intelligent appreciation of the object served (granted, of course, the mind to serve).

I have used the term, the cure of souls, as descriptive of the work of the minister. The term has the wider sense of "care" and within that the narrower sense of "healing." If one could conceive a pedagogue to be at once father, teacher, and physician, he would come very close to the ideal of the Christian pastor as he stands related to the souls of men. These "selves" or souls are undeveloped; they must needs be educated; not informed simply, but developed and strengthened in their normal powers. These souls need nourishment; they must receive the food which is convenient for them. These souls are sick; they must be supplied with that which is suited to the healing of their disease. When a work is so comprehensive in relation to the souls of men it seems almost a sacrilege that men should enter upon it without knowledge of what the normal development of the soul is, of what the processes of assimilation and the appropriate food to be assimilated are, and of what the sickness of a soul may be, the medicine for its cure, and the nature of the cure itself. I have employed the terms "education," "nourishment," and "healing" of the soul. They represent the comprehensive ministry of an ideal religion, and we thankfully recognize that they represent in fact the actual ministry of the Christian religion of which our Christian ministers are the agents. These three processes are described in one way or another in the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. They are expounded in every treatise that deals with the doctrine of human salvation. They are implicit or explicit in the articles of all Christian faiths. But in this connection the all-important thing for us is that they are not found primarily in books or in teachings, but first of all in the conscious life of individuals. If they are found anywhere else, in any human speech or literature or symbol whatsoever, it is because they are, before that, actual facts within the life of

man's soul. Being such they necessarily form material for psychological study and report.

The minister is to be the instrument of a new life to souls. What is this new life? The minister may give us his answer from the Bible itself or he may adopt the language of his Christian theology, but whether he do the one or the other, the fact in consciousness lies back of it, and that psychology sets itself to report. Where the Bible or theology speak of restoration or new birth psychology recognizes, as the actual fact in the life of the soul, that certain abnormal features have been eliminated and that there has been a return to normal subjective conditions. It is most unwise to occupy an exclusively dogmatic attitude with reference to human salvation, for every single doctrine affecting human salvation requires for its full and sympathetic appreciation a knowledge of the soul and of the particular fact in the soul's life which it assumes to set forth. When the New Testament or our Christian teaching speaks of "salvation," who can understand the speech of these authorities without having studied earnestly the fact of salvation as it is actually present in the life of men? Seek to estimate, if you will, the interpretative value of psychological knowledge in relation to the following questions: What is actually happening in consciousness when one is "convinced of sin"? What is sin in the actual life of a human self? How shall we distinguish "sin in character" and "sin in deed" within the soul itself? What is "faith" as the self performs the act? What is "conversion" as a conscious state? What does a man actually do when he "seeks" salvation? What is the inner soul-history which we call "sanctification"? What does a careful and reverent examination of consciousness show the "witness of the Spirit" to be? What is the glorious fact of the soul's "communion with God" as a fact? On answers to these questions rest the statements of Inspiration and the uninspired statements of our Christian teaching. Psychology, more particularly the psychology of religion, gives us its answer to each of these queries. The answer is, strictly speaking, a reflection, in language as exact as the trained mind of the scientist can employ, of the facts-the whole facts, and nothing but the facts— in the inner experience of man's soul. Where inferences are