If a minister can do this work even indirectly he is happy, but if he can do it directly by virtue of his wholesome character, his genuine knowledge and love of boys, his athletic skill, and his unabated zest for life, his lot is above that of kings and his reward above all earthly riches.

Then, too, it is not alone the potential value of boys for the Kingdom of God, and what the minister may do for them; but what may they not do for him?  How fatal is the boy collective to all artificiality, sanctimony, weakness, make-believe, and jointless dignity; and how prone is the ministry to these psychological and semi-physical pests!  For, owing to the demands of the pulpit and of private and social intercourse, the minister finds it necessary to talk more than most men.  He must also theorize extensively because of the very nature of theological discipline.  Moreover, he is occupied particularly with those affairs of the inner life which are as intangible as they are important.  His relation with people is largely a Sunday relation, or at any rate a religious one, and he meets them on the pacific side.  Very naturally they reveal to him their best selves, and, true to Christian charity and training, he sees the best in everyone.  If the women of his parish receive more than their proper share of attention the situation is proportionately worse.  It follows that the minister needs the most wholesome contact with stern reality in order to offset the subtle drift toward a remote, theoretical, or sentimental world.  In this respect commercial life is more favorable to naturalness and virility; while a fair amount of manual labor is conducive to sanity, mental poise, and sound judgment as to the facts of life.  The minister must have an elemental knowledge of and respect for objective reality; and he must know human nature.

Now among all the broad and rich human contacts that can put the minister in touch with vital realities there is none so electric, so near to revelation as the boy.  Collectively he is frank to the point of cruelty and as elemental as a savage.  Confronted alone and by the minister, who is not as yet his chum, he reveals chiefly the minister’s helplessness.  Taken in company with his companions and in his play he is a veritable searchlight laying bare those manly and ante-professional qualities which must underlie an efficient ministry.  Later life, indeed, wears the mask, praises dry sermons, smiles when bored, and takes careful precautions against spontaneity and the indiscretions of unvarnished truth; but the boy among his fellows and on his own ground represents the normal and unfettered reaction of the human heart to a given personality.  The minister may be profoundly benefited by knowing and heeding the frank estimate of a “bunch” of boys.  They are the advance agents of the final judgment; they will find the essential man.  May it not be with him as with Kipling’s Tomlinson, who, under the examination of both “Peter” and the “little devils,” was unable to qualify for admission either to heaven or hell: