There are some men who by the sheer force of their personality subdue their church difficulties.  They hold the captious in awe.  By a sort of magnetic persuasion and lively sense of humor they soothe this one and that, win the regard of the outlying community, attach many new members to the organization, and build up, out of discordant and erstwhile discontented elements, a harmonious and active church.  This is the man for these martial times!  If there are born leaders in every other department of the world’s work, men who quietly but firmly assert their authority and supremacy in the tasks in which they hold, by free election or legitimate appointment, a place at the head—­it ought to be so in the Church of God!  I long to see arise in the ministry a race of iron!

There are other difficulties, seldom spoken of, of which one must write frankly, though with the keenest sympathy, if one is to look deeply into the modern church problem.  First:  Is a minister’s environment favorable to his best personal development?  Does he not miss much from the lack of the world’s hearty give-and-take?  He gets criticism, but not of a just or all-round kind.  Small things may be pecked at, trifles may be made mountains of by the disgruntled, but where does he get a clear-sighted, whole-hearted estimate of himself and his work?  Who tells him of his real virtues, his real faults?  Among all his friends, who is there, man or woman, who is brave enough to be true?

Other men are soon shaken into place.  Their personal traits continually undergo a process of chiselling and adjustment.  They are told uncomfortable things how quickly!  At the club, in the university, in the market, the ploughing-field, the counting-room, they rub up against each other, and no mercy is shown by man to man until primary signs of crudeness are worn off.  Let a conceited professor get in a college chair!  Watch a hundred students begin their delightful and salutary process of “taking him down” by the sort of mirth in which college boys excel!  Their unkindness is not right, but the result is, they never molest a man who is merely eccentric.

Watch a scientific association jump with all fours upon a man who has just read a paper before their body!  How unsparingly they analyze and criticise!  He has to meet questions, opposition, comments, shafts of wit and envy, jovial teasing and correction.  He goes out from the meeting with a keener love of truth and exactness, and a less exalted idea of his own powers.  Watch the rivalry and sparring that go on in any business.  Men meet men who attack them; they fight and overcome them, or are themselves overcome.

Human friction is not always harmful.  A minister should not be hurt or angered by disagreement and discussion.  No one’s ideas are final.  Let him expect to stand in the very midst of a high-strung, spirited, and hard-working generation.  Let him be turned out of doors.  Let him travel, look, learn, meet men and women, and conquer in the arena of manhood.  Then, by means of this undaunted manhood, he may the better guide the fiery enthusiasms of men, inspire their higher ambitions, and comfort them in their bitter human sorrows!