UC-NRLIF 
 
 *B E7q 145 
 
Apt and Meet 
 
 Counsels to Candidates 
 For Holy Orders 
 
 At the 
 
 Church Divinity School 
 
 of the Pacific 
 
 By 
 
 WILLIAM F. NICHOLS 
 
 Dean 
 
 ** Take heed that the persons^ whom ye 
 present unto us^ he apt and meet " 
 
 ^ 
 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER, Inc. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, 1909 
 By THOMAS WHITTAKER, Inc. 
 
 BELCHEfi 
 
To 
 
 her dearest 
 
 by my side 
 
 ever my Ideal Help^ 
 
 Meet for the Ministry 
 
 182278 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/aptmeetcounselstOOnichrich 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 IT was the voice of a true Seer that said when 
 asked. What is the greatest danger of the cen- 
 tury ? "I have no doubt what is the greatest 
 danger — it is the absence of high aspirations." 
 This was an estimate made in the first week of the 
 first year of the twentieth century by one who 
 singularly combined in himself the powers of the 
 historian and the statesman, with the experience of 
 a man of affairs over the Diocese which probably 
 best of all samples the stir of the modern world, 
 the Diocese of London. It was too his death-bed 
 conviction, uttered, as it proved, at the end of his 
 signal episcopate. The judgment is especially valu- 
 able because he knew so well the comparison with 
 other centuries, like the thirteenth which he cited, 
 and had so full and exact insight into the condi- 
 tions of the century which was dawning. Bishop 
 Creighton's own principle for meeting such con- 
 ditions is well proven in his life, in what he called 
 " Goethe's doctrine of Entsagung ?'^ For our pres- 
 ent use his own working formula is happily and 
 pointedly expressed in one of his letters. He writes : 
 " To Goethe I apprehend Entsagung meant to do 
 
VI PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 honestly what was immediately before him, and 
 then see if he was strengthened to do anything 
 more." This outlook and this inlook of such a man 
 are both of inestimable value at the threshold of 
 the Ministry. They give a golden " precept of the 
 Elders." They reflect the very Vision and Service 
 in the Ordinal as they divine the signs of the times. 
 From time to time these Divinity School Counsels 
 have been given to help those looking to Holy 
 Orders in justifying the confidence expressed in the 
 Ordinal : " We have good hope that you have 
 well weighed these matters with yourselves, long 
 before this time." And the aim and prayer have 
 been to turn the heart searchings upon that priestly 
 character which must be so well-weighed long be- 
 fore, in seminary days, to a discernment of the 
 state of the actual world to be served and of the 
 higher aspirations with which alone the Minister 
 of Jesus Christ can serve it. 
 
 Thirty-five years in the Ministry, more than half 
 of which have laid upon the writer the responsibil- 
 ity, as bishop, of meeting pressing questions of 
 ministerial supply on this " other Coast," and al- 
 most half of which have constantly brought close 
 contacts with those feeling the vocation to Holy 
 Orders, — through chairs held in two Divinity 
 Schools — such years have seemed in the simple line 
 of duty to dictate these Counsels, however inade- 
 quate and however many the points not touched 
 upon. The hope in them has been to point — even 
 though afar off — to such aspirations as that which 
 
PREFATORY NOTE Vll 
 
 Archbishop Benson made his own in Wordsworth's 
 lines : 
 
 "^Thy soul was as a star and dwelt apart 
 
 and yet thy soul 
 
 The lowliest duties on herself did lay,'' 
 
 William F. Nichols. 
 
 The Bishop's Houses 
 
 San Francisco, 
 
 Epiphany f 1909. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. Apt and Meet .... 
 
 II. Learning 
 
 III. Godly Conversation . 
 
 IV. Due Exercise of the Ministry . 
 V. To THE Honor of God 
 
 VI. The Edifying of His Church . 
 
 VII. The Man of God 
 
 VIII. The Stewardship of Time — Time for 
 Devotion .... 
 
 IX. The Stewardship of Time — Right 
 USE OF Retirement 
 
 X. Good Bodily Trim 
 
 XL Dark Speech Upon the Harp . 
 
 XIL Camaraderie .... 
 
 XIII. Vocation and Vacation . 
 
 XIV. Books and Bookishness 
 XV. Money Matters 
 
 XVI. Tact 
 
 XVII. " Getting Out Among the People ' 
 
 XVIIL "The Cloth" .... 
 
 XIX. Prayer for Vocation 
 
 XX. Matriculation Address . 
 ix 
 
OF THE 
 
 APT AND MEET 
 
 "Take heed" — so the searching challenge 
 warns both Presenter and Candidate at the thres- 
 hold of Ordination. Note that the test thought 
 then is not what the Candidate has done, but what 
 he is. " Take heed that the persons, whom ye present 
 unto us, be apt and meet." There has been the 
 canonical course of preparation but has it really 
 fitted him? All his certificates of recommenda- 
 tion and his examinations have been duly met, 
 but after all is he meet? Is his heart right? 
 Has he the " root of the matter " in him ? Does 
 he stand there so "truly called according to the 
 will of our Lord Jesus Christ" that the convic- 
 tion has been transmuted into a calm expectancy 
 of the holy gift of Orders ? Is he capax — to 
 use the old word — is he capable of the Venij 
 Creator : 
 
 "Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, 
 And lighten with celestial fire.'' 
 
 The challenge then is the really critical exami- 
 nation question of all. In their ultimate bearing 
 
 1 
 
2 APT AND MEET 
 
 all other examination papers in the preparation 
 for the ministry lead up to that. The whole 
 curriculum of the prescribed studies and the 
 whole manner of life must be brought to that 
 final scrutiny. Indeed all that has made up the 
 personality in the past must have something to 
 do with it. To that applies especially that 
 suggestive phrase in the Ordination Charge, " We 
 have good hope that ye have well weighed 
 these things with yourselves long before this 
 time." One looking forward to the Ministry 
 then cannot begin too soon an habitual and well 
 devised rule of self-investigation of his progress 
 towards the sort of manhood he would wish to 
 present and ask his Presenter to present, when 
 confronted by that vital challenge. There is a 
 sense in which the most constant text-book for a 
 Postulant or Candidate for Holy Orders must be 
 the book of his own Character. 
 
 Character will also be a blessed book of de- 
 votion if he is tracing in it the witnessing of the 
 Holy Spirit with his spirit that he is a child of 
 God. If struggles, faults, temptations, doubts, 
 blindness as well as love, joy, peace, vision are 
 betokening here and there the motion of the 
 Holy Spirit over those inner deeps of personality, 
 some of his most precious hours of self-commun- 
 
APT AND MEET 3 
 
 ing will be spent in such stillness. But there must 
 go with it the application to character as a text- 
 book never to be laid aside, of the study of what 
 we are and are becoming under the spur of that 
 quick and powerful question which is as it were 
 to lay our life bare before God — Is he apt and 
 meet? In this the Candidate must be his own 
 constant examiner. He must be fair and thorough 
 with himself. That coming challenge must take 
 hold of him and his anxieties and his determina- 
 tion as an examination upon which the deepest 
 concerns of his ministry are at stake. And to 
 be ready for it, all along in the preparatory 
 years it must be in his mind and in his prayers 
 and in his plans and work. Mountain altitudes 
 apart are those who are girding themselves for 
 the goal of Ordination with such a stalwart 
 spirit, and those who languidly take the prelimi- 
 nary steps as if to stroll through lectures and 
 question papers and certificates of conduct were 
 an agreeable way to spend a few years and 
 then by a sort of canonical destiny to become a 
 clergyman. 
 
 No strange thing will happen to us if as we 
 ponder upon this high standard we find ourselves 
 faltering over the misgiving, Can I ever hope to 
 be "apt and meet"? Knowing my failings and 
 
4 APT AND MEET 
 
 limitations, can I attain unto anything like an 
 assuring qualification ? St. Paul reflects this state 
 of mind when he exclaims, " Who is sufficient for 
 these things ? " and when he affirms, " I am not 
 meet to be called an apostle." To an honest heart 
 the very misgiving has in it the wholesome instinct 
 to lean all the more upon the grace of God. 
 St. Paul's poise of character was found by supple- 
 menting his own short weight with the Lord's 
 promise, " My grace is sufficient for thee ; for My 
 strength is made perfect in weakness." St. Paul's 
 heart to go on was ever sustained by the proof 
 within him that he trusted with his whole being 
 " by the grace of God I am what I am." That 
 must have carried him through many a siege of self- 
 distrust. And it is one of the most precious ex- 
 periences of a sense of vocation to the ministry that 
 the very leading towards it is God's leading. " I 
 have chosen you " seems to be writing itself out as 
 a forecast of the career. There is an unmistakable 
 inward motion. It is the gentle suasion of God's 
 Holy Spirit. We can confidently trust that we are 
 inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon 
 us this Office and Ministration. Liddon traces with 
 careful insight this evolution of the high call in one 
 whom Christ chooses. He says,^ " He has been the 
 
 » Liddon, " Clerical Life and Work/ » pp. 210, 211. 
 
APT AND MEET 6 
 
 object of a choice rather than its author, . . . 
 He has yielded to a mysterious attraction which has 
 drawn him on. He has been guided, it may be, 
 partly by the force of family circumstances, partly 
 by natural tastes and sympathies, partly by the direct 
 results of education, partly by minds with which 
 he has come in contact. He has followed too the 
 guidance of an inward light growing stronger in 
 his soul as the years have passed on, a light which 
 has discovered him in all his native misery to him- 
 self face to face with the Eternal Love which has 
 redeemed him and which now bids him own and 
 glorify it. And thus what was at first a vague 
 hope became more and more a purpose, and 
 what had been for years only a general, undefined 
 purpose, ripened at length in the strength of prayer 
 into a formal resolution solemnly taken beneath the 
 eye of the Kedeemer. . . . When he is asked. 
 Dost thou believe that thou art called by the will of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ ? ... it is the verdict of 
 his whole moral being that he can answer confi- 
 dently, yet humbly, ^ I trust so.' " 
 
 Now this singling one out, so to speak, by our 
 Lord, implies some principle of selection beyond our 
 ken, by which He sees in us that we are " apt and 
 meet " for His use. That must lie at the starting- 
 point of the experience. The first stirring is from 
 
6 APT AND MEET 
 
 Him, not from us. " We are not only the sheep of 
 His pasture but the sheep also of His hands," says 
 Bishop Andrewes. And His initiative, we may for 
 our comfort believe, would not have been taken and 
 He would not have put the persistent thought in 
 our minds if He had not detected in us primarily 
 something to justify it. When the Master called 
 the Apostles He read them far better than they 
 could read themselves. He knew the strong and 
 weak points of each as He knew the sphere they 
 were to fill. And the fact that they were His 
 choice was enough to enable them to follow Him. 
 So every humble servant of Christ in whom He 
 makes His leading towards the Ministry felt may 
 well lean much upon the fact that such a leading in 
 itself indicates that Christ discovers in him, even 
 though he himself may not, marks of his being apt 
 and meet. Vocation presupposes something of 
 revelation of Christ's will for our life based upon 
 His unerring knowledge of our life. When the 
 question of studying for the Ministry has seriously 
 taken possession of a man, it is pretty safe to pre- 
 sume that it has done so because the man has some 
 points especially favorable for it. God has already 
 seen in him possibilities of the making of a useful 
 clergyman. The very name Clergyman implies 
 choice {fiXftpoi)^ and God has put it into his heart to 
 
APT AND MEET 7 
 
 be a Clergyman because He has chosen him and He 
 has chosen him because he possesses qualities to fit 
 him for it. 
 
 Of course a passing sentiment does not in itself 
 constitute a settled sense of vocation, nor is the 
 danger of neglecting the gift when an undoubted 
 call is trying to declare itself, one to be ignored. 
 But the true following of the Divine leading sooner 
 or later will, if heeded with ordinary interest and 
 care, assert itself. And when it has asserted itself 
 there is an unspeakable encouragement that comes 
 with it in this dawning upon us that whatever be 
 our hesitation over our capacity, oi* wonder how we 
 can ever grow up to the demands of the future 
 work, the Holy Spirit has been the Judge — not we 
 — whether we can become apt and meet. Many a 
 time a man may need just that consideration to 
 make him go on in faith. But when full place is 
 given to that sense of our sending, it still remains 
 for us to apply ourselves wholly to this one thing 
 and draw all our cares and studies this way. It is 
 our part to see that we devote ourselves, soul, body 
 and spirit, with all their powers and faculties, to 
 preparation for God's service. So may we in all 
 humility carry up to the ordination hour the well 
 considered credentials of others, after due enquiry 
 and examination, that we are apt and meet. This 
 
8 APT AND MEET 
 
 I believe to be your honest and constant purpose 
 here. And at these early communion hours I pro- 
 pose, as I have opportunity, to suggest various fields 
 and phases of that preparation. Following this in- 
 troductory suggestion of what is the meaning of I. 
 " Apt and Meet," we shall try to dwell somewhat 
 upon our Ordination vision of what it is to be Apt 
 and Meet : — 
 
 II. In Learning. 
 
 III. In Godly Conversation. 
 
 IV. For Due Exercise of the Ministry. 
 V. To the Honor of God. 
 
 VI. To the Edifying of His Church. 
 
 Almighty God, who hath given you this will 
 to do all these things : Grant also unto you 
 strength and power to perform the same, that He 
 may accomplish His work which He hath begun 
 in you : through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
II 
 
 LEAENING 
 
 Candidates for Ordination must be " apt and 
 meet for their learning." If not so, it is not the 
 fault of the Prayer Book or the Canons. In the 
 Ordination Offices and elsewhere in the Prayer 
 Book the only ideal that fits into the phraseology 
 is that of a well-learned clergy. And we are left in 
 no manner of doubt as to the kind of learning es- 
 sential. "Seeing that ye cannot by any other 
 means compass the doing of so weighty a work, per- 
 taining to the salvation of man, but with doctrine 
 and exhortation taken out of the Holy Scriptures, 
 and with a life agreeable to the same ; consider how 
 studious ye ought to be in reading and learning the 
 Scriptures, and in framing the manners both of 
 yourselves, and of them that specially pertain unto 
 you, according to the rule of the same Scriptures ; 
 and for this self -same cause, how ye ought to for- 
 sake and set aside, as much as ye may, all worldly 
 cares and studies." Nothing could be plainer than 
 that the vital point is for the candidate and clergy- 
 man to know and live his Bible. That must have 
 
 9 
 
10 APT AND MEET 
 
 the chief claim upon his study and his literary ac- 
 complishment. No mere incidental study of it will 
 do. The Word of God must be his first and fore- 
 most because it is the handbook for Christ. " Ye 
 search the Scriptures because ye think that in them 
 ye have eternal life ; and these are they which bear 
 witness of Me." Every priest must solemnly vow 
 to be diligent in reading the Holy Scriptures, and 
 in such studies as help to the knowledge of the same 
 laying aside the study of the world and the flesh. 
 Could anything stand out more searchingly as a 
 corrective of Bible-shelving than that? In the 
 wide and inviting field of letters, men may purchase 
 to themselves many good degrees, but the one de- 
 gree that every true minister of Jesus Christ must 
 have is the diploma of familiarity with the Holy 
 Scriptures. No brilliant parts and no encyclopaedic 
 knowledge can take the place of that. Whatever 
 else he may be an authority upon, he must be even 
 more of an authority upon the main book of his 
 ministry. He may dip into a thousand passing 
 topics and absorb and create volumes here and there 
 as he finds himself interested in some special line of 
 research, but it is only " by daily reading and weigh- 
 ing the Scriptures " that he can " wax riper and 
 stronger " in his ministry. The Bible must be his 
 meat, not bis confectionery. Lamentable as may 
 
LEARNING 11 
 
 be the effect of unwholesome reading upon the mind 
 of people at large to whom the Bible-reading habit 
 is strange or wanting, even that is not so deplorable 
 as the starvation of spirit of the minister of Christ 
 who lays aside the study of the Scriptures for any 
 studies of the world or the flesh. A great preacher 
 once pointed out that curious trait of humanity by 
 which men are wont to hanker after, so to speak, 
 an amateur record in something aside from their 
 main pursuit in life. The good business man is 
 sometimes not satisfied until he can manipulate the 
 market as a sensational plunger in speculation. 
 The cobbler, to use the old Latin illustration, does 
 not stick to his last. The hapless making of a 
 merely amateur Clergyman may spoil a good lay- 
 man. And so the age which crowds into the min- 
 istry so many varied activities is one, which if he is 
 not very careful, surrounds the priest with subtile 
 and strong temptation to try to excel in many 
 another accomplishment to the sacrifice of just 
 that plain knowing and preaching his Bible. Per- 
 haps this may have gone so far that some will be 
 disposed to challenge the position of the Prayer 
 Book in putting the principal stress upon that kind 
 of learning. But that will only show what a de- 
 parture there has been from the standpoint of the 
 Ordinal, as there can be no question as to what that 
 
12 APT AND MEET 
 
 standpoint is in the quotations already given. To 
 be apt and meet in learning is primarily to be apt 
 and meet in the many-sided and modern learning of 
 the Holy Scriptures unless the whole tenor of the 
 Ordination Oflfices is a great mistake. To have 
 other studies interfere with that, far more to have 
 other studies supersede that, to fall into the habit 
 of general reading which reduces the Bible reading 
 to a mere looking over snatches of it now and then, 
 all this is at the peril of high vision for the man and 
 the flock. To treat the Bible as if it were a Dic- 
 tionary of Quotations for texts, and that sometimes 
 with sermons that as Dr. South caustically observed 
 were truly drawn from the text from which they 
 would never have come by spontaneous flow, is not 
 altogether an unheard of illustration of the way in 
 which the consciousness of the vital need of Bible 
 study may gradually fade out of the life. And as 
 one reads over the Ordination oflSces from year to 
 year on anniversaries of ordination days. Ember 
 Seasons, or at other times of meditation upon their 
 standards, I believe there are few that do not find 
 here a sense of shortcoming to cause honest heart 
 searching and renewed effort. Cultivate then in 
 these formative years a conscience upon this which 
 may have so much to do with making or marring 
 your influence in the ministry. Saturate your mind 
 
LEARNING 13 
 
 with the Scriptures. Kead them constantly as a 
 devotional habit, over and above any studies of them 
 in your preparatory work. Search them to find 
 Christ for your own character. Make them your 
 chief concern in fitting yourself to carry Christ's 
 message from them to others. Aim at a Gospel for 
 your own heart which will be a Gospel of which 
 there will be a veritable woe unto you if you preach 
 it not to others. That is to be " wise unto salva- 
 tion through faith which is in Christ Jesus," in that 
 Scripture which " is profitable for doctrine, for re- 
 proof, for correction, for instruction in righteous- 
 ness, that the man of God may be perfect, thor- 
 oughly furnished unto all good works." 
 
 But we remember that while we accord this high 
 place of prominence to the Holy Scriptures, this 
 learning in which we are to hope to be apt and meet 
 includes also " such studies as help to the knowledge 
 of the same " and covers an almost boundless field 
 of study. Indeed one branch of such study. The- 
 ology, used to be called the " Queen of Sciences." 
 If it were supposable that a Candidate could only 
 know two books^ his Bible and his Prayer Book 
 would be his wisest choice. But he is expected to 
 know far more than two books and the whole 
 course of preparation as outlined for our Divinity 
 Schools in the canons is intended to round out, and 
 
14 APT AND MEET 
 
 afford scope to his learning. A College or Uni- 
 versity degree is, when practicable, presupposed. 
 That marks the stage of progress requisite for Can- 
 didateship. Many well-furnished men in the minis- 
 try have passed the equivalent of that as pro- 
 vided in the canon, bringing to their Candidateship 
 an alternate training found in the university of 
 practical experience out in the world. And too 
 much emphasis can hardly be laid upon the ad- 
 vantage of the broad culture of university life and 
 atmosphere to one in the Holy Ministry. Every 
 possible opportunity should be given for it. Every 
 provision should be made for it in shaping a twenti- 
 eth century Clergy. Short circuiting the current 
 of learning is apt to play havoc with the transfor- 
 mation process. The fullest measure of scholarly 
 work should be the ambition and the goal. This is 
 not to overlook the fact that many a scholar has 
 made himself such and reached high standards 
 even when circumstances have deprived him of the 
 living in academic halls. Many a one has been as 
 apt and meet for his learning in the long run in 
 that way, as has his fortunate neighbor who has 
 had the most extended privileges of a university. 
 But, generally speaking, the more widely and thor- 
 oughly the man in the ministry can assimilate the 
 real learning of a university, the better qualified he 
 
UiNfVER: 
 
 or 
 .^^EARNING 15 
 
 is to deal with the men of his time. If he can, let 
 him have his full university course before becoming 
 a Candidate for Holy Orders. And further, if he 
 can, later on, let him specialize in any post-graduate 
 work, and that at the University either in our own 
 Country or the Old World where there can be 
 found the most distinguished and erudite treatment 
 and teaching of that specialty. When there are time 
 and means and favoring conditions, as for example 
 at some of the Summer Schools at University 
 Centres, for that, they could not be applied to a 
 better use. Never did the Church need sound 
 scholarship more and never could she apply it more 
 readily or efficiently than in this time of earnest 
 truth seeking in so many fields. " The priest's lips 
 should keep knowledge and they should seek the 
 law at his mouth : for he is the messenger of the 
 Lord of Hosts." The Church should never be will- 
 ing to have her highest scholarship abdicate to any 
 other scholarship. And may the day come when in 
 our American Church, around our Cathedrals or 
 otherwise, there may be ample provision for this < 
 lofty purview of priestly knowledge, so that chosen 
 scholars without other avocations may hold up to 
 their generation the truest learning which in its 
 white light blends all the spectrum's colors of hu- 
 man progress. There is in every period of active 
 
16 APT AND MEET 
 
 research only a new challenge to priestly learning 
 to become " the astonishment of the world " as it 
 can coordinate all truth with Him " in whom are 
 hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." 
 And as it is, probably it would surprise most people 
 to know, for example, what an output of such Chris- 
 tian literature the presses of the world are making 
 to-day. 
 
 But just here there is a consideration which is in 
 some danger of being overlooked in urging the ful- 
 ness of university opportunity. It can never be the 
 concern of the university as it must be of the Church 
 to see that whatever other learning her ministry has 
 it must have a specializing on the immediate lines 
 of preparation we have just been considering. 
 Somewhere must come in the Great " Elective " of 
 the Church, for learning in the Holy Scriptures and 
 " such studies as help to the knowledge of the same." 
 Even more technical in a good sense than the Law 
 School or the School of Medicine must be the 
 Divinity School. There is a sense in which we have 
 a Faith once for all delivered. We do not gather 
 it out of the atmosphere as we go along. We must 
 take time to absorb it and coordinate it as it has 
 been delivered. We must see it in the light of its 
 original languages and of ancient and modern schol- 
 arship ; we must follow its historical stages of ac- 
 
LEARNING 17 
 
 ceptance or challenge by mankind ; we must ac- 
 quaint ourselves with its scientific formulas; we 
 must learn its adaptation to the human needs of 
 different countries and different centuries : we must 
 try to interpret it into our own conduct and condi- 
 tions. Obviously to accomplish this, Seminary Fac- 
 ulties and equipment must be of the most approved 
 University standards of efliciency possible for their 
 purpose. All of that takes time and quiet and con- 
 centration and, as is said of bees, a certain " spirit of 
 the hive." We remember that profound maxim of 
 the Latin Father that, " It hath not pleased God to 
 effect man's salvation by dialectic," and can easily 
 understand that a centre charged with controversy 
 or high philosophic or scientific enquiry is not op- 
 portune for this essential period for quiet obsession 
 by the truth with which the Church would dower 
 her ministry. This is not to quarantine the Candi- 
 date from the active thought and research that he 
 must be trained to welcome and be ready to meet. 
 What I have already said of the ideal University 
 training up to the fulness of the capacity should 
 relieve our theme of any such thought. It is only 
 to claim for the Church a distinct and whole-hearted 
 and undiverted attention for a time to her proper 
 shaping influences for her service, in order that she 
 may see to it that her Candidates are apt and meet 
 
18 APT AND MEET 
 
 for her especial work and after the manner she has 
 a right to prescribe for herself. And so she must 
 guard the integrity and the identity of her Seminary 
 scholarship. If she does not, no General Univer- 
 sity, from the nature of the case, can or will. There 
 must be spiritual as well as intellectual environ- 
 ment. And from her standpoint at any rate I be- 
 lieve the more reflection that is given this necessity 
 for making her Candidates apt and meet the more 
 will be the tendency to rectify the estimate of the 
 place of the Divinity School as opportune, however 
 full the use of the University before or after its 
 course. Consecrate your learning in these years 
 and form habits of study then with high ideals that 
 you may be presented apt and meet at your Ordi- 
 nation and at that day when the Chief Shepherd 
 shall appear." 
 
 That it may please Thee to illuminate all Bish- 
 ops, Priests, and Deacons, with true knowledge and 
 understanding of Thy Word ; and that both by 
 their preaching and living they may set it forth, 
 and show it accordingly ; We beseech Thee to hear 
 uSj good Lord. 
 
m 
 
 GODLY CONVEESATION 
 
 To be apt and meet for our " godly conversation," 
 I need scarcely explain to you, covers the whole 
 qualification of character and conduct. Conversa- 
 tion in a measure is only conversion " writ large." 
 It means the whole make-up of the manhood. The 
 Ee vised Yersion in Galatians 1 : 13 where St. Paul 
 is referring to his own record, substitutes " manner 
 of life " for the word " conversation " of the King 
 James Version. So that here the familiar use of 
 the word as a synonym for speech or talk must be 
 widened out to include all the habit of the person- 
 ality of which language is only one expression. 
 The force of the caution at the threshold of the Or- 
 dination Office is that, taken all in all, the Candidate 
 must possess some marked degree of a godly as dis- 
 tinguished from a worldly bent and demeanor. 
 The priests must be clothed with righteousness, if the 
 saints are to sing with joyfulness. The character 
 must be trained to tell as character. St. Paul charged 
 Timothy with that when he wrote, " Be thou an ex- 
 ample of the believers ... in conversation." 
 
 And further the word in the original seems to 
 19 
 
20 APT AND MEET 
 
 convey especially the idea of the priest not by him- 
 self but out among men — in the thick of things. 
 In the use of the word in Galatians just cited, by 
 " conversation," or " manner of life," St. Paul 
 designates that stirring part of his life when he 
 says, " Beyond measure I persecuted the Church of 
 God and wasted it." And so " godly conversation " 
 is no mere hothouse plant under glass but a hardy 
 robust out-in-the-open kind of growth. The very 
 camaraderie of Divinity School life, with its kindly 
 chaflf and bantering over mutual foibles and callow- 
 ness, can really help its vigor. The more the man 
 of action carries it into his pulpit and into his 
 ministrations, with the contact with his fellow men 
 and into the whole fierce light of his public life the 
 better. All Christians should aim at it. " Who is 
 a wise man and endued with knowledge among 
 you ? " — says St. James — " let him shew out of a 
 good conversation his works with meekness of 
 wisdom." But the priest must lay seriously to 
 heart that his is the bounden duty to study not to 
 be the average man in this, but the type. 
 
 The Abbe Du Bois in his searching and stimulat- 
 ing Treatise on " The Character of the Christian 
 Priest,"^ says, "We all know that there are among 
 
 ^ *' Holiness to the Lord. The Character of the Christian Priest 
 with an Introduction by the Lord Bishop of Carlisle," 
 
GODLY COmrERSATION 21 
 
 us" — he was writing more especially of France but 
 alas, it is not without its warning everywhere — 
 " four sorts of Priests, very different the one from the 
 other — the had Priest, the lukewarm and hachslid- 
 ing, the good, and finally the holy Priest." And 
 then in chapters which amount to an ordeal of 
 self-searching to any one who reads them carefully, 
 he traces the distinguishing features of these four 
 classes as they are manifest : 1st, in the employ- 
 ment of time ; 2d, in Prayer ; 3d, in the Holy 
 Eucharist ; 4th, in Divine Service ; 5th, in Self-ex- 
 amination ; 6th, in Spiritual reading and Yth, in the 
 administration of the Sacraments. There is no 
 little food for sober thought in them and one may 
 well read and reread them many times in his minis- 
 try with ever new vision for higher aims. Indeed 
 the former Bishop of Carlisle who wrote the 
 luminous introduction to the English translation 
 and adaptation of Abbe Du Bois' book justly says 
 of it that it may be used by a Clergyman as a 
 " Companion of Solitude, a friend ever ready with 
 a word of advice, a voice whispering to the soul 
 ^ Come up higher.' " And suggesting that " per- 
 haps there is no better method of observing the 
 spiritual barometer of a Priest's life " than to read 
 over on his knees each anniversary of his Ordina- 
 tion Day the Ordination Service and especially the 
 
22 APT AND MEET 
 
 VOWS, the Bishop added his sense of the helpfulness 
 to such exercises of this book. It has the true alti- 
 tude and ozone for ever climbing new heights of 
 Godly Conversation. I wish it could be among 
 the well-worn books of devotion of every priest. 
 The Candidate for Holy Orders in his preparation 
 to be " apt and meet " for his godly conversation 
 cannot, however, begin too early to act upon a sug- 
 gestion which the Prayer Book itself gives us in the 
 so salutary charge to the Priest in the Ordinal. It is 
 a suggestion of the utmost moment to the right de- 
 velopment of qualifications for the ministry and 
 one which is so Scriptural and Pentecostal that its 
 prime value is recognized the moment attention is 
 called to it. And yet there may be grave question 
 as to whether practically it is acted upon or even 
 intelligently grasped as it might be. It is this : 
 " Howbeit you cannot have a mind and will thereto 
 of yourselves ; for that will and ability is given of 
 God alone: therefore ye oughts and have need^ to 
 jproAf earnestly for His Holy Spirit^ Whatever be 
 the range or objects of our intercession, whatever 
 be the petitions into which we throw most earnest 
 and most constant interest, here we have something 
 which should be among the very closest concerns of 
 our heart and the most fervent and most un- 
 ceasing of our every-day prayers. There is nothing 
 
GODLY CONVERSATION 23 
 
 we need to ask for more than "for His Holy 
 Spirit " as the Prayer Book puts it. Our life in 
 Christ as well as our priesthood in Christ must at 
 all stages invoke its Veni, Creator Spiritus. It is 
 in our very cry, " Abba, Father." It is in the wit- 
 ness with our spirits that we are the children of 
 God. It is in the cleansing of our thoughts by the 
 inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is in the help to 
 our infirmities. It is in the intercession for us 
 which cannot be uttered. It is in the sevenfold 
 gifts of Confirmation. It is in the consecration of 
 the Holy Eucharist. And so in our high Calling, 
 the inward motion which whispered it, we believe 
 is of the Holy Ghost. The empowering of our 
 Holy Orders is through our reception with the 
 laying on of hands of the Holy Ghost. The 
 Scriptures we are to teach and preach and the open- 
 ing of our understanding and of the understanding of 
 the hearers is through the Holy Ghost. And so it is 
 but part of the whole genius of godly conversation as 
 it is to be a fundamental factor in our ministry to 
 " Continually pray to God the Father, by the media- 
 tion of our only Saviour, Jesus Christ, for the heav- 
 enly assistance of the Holy Ghost." And saintly 
 lives like those of our Anglican Bishops Andrewes 
 and Wilson have ever found sweet satisfaction in 
 praying directly to the Holy Ghost, as in the OflBce 
 
24 APT AND MEET 
 
 of Institution in the Prayer Book we pray for the 
 congregation, addressing, " O God, the Holy Ghost, 
 Sanctifier of the faithful." It translates creed of 
 the Holy Spirit into priestly conduct. 
 
 Herein then lies the leading to a settled charac- 
 teristic and habit of priestly prayer and that is to 
 pray for the Holy Ghost, to pray to the Holy 
 Ghost in the foremost devotions of the priestly life. 
 The answer to that prayer is in all the cares and 
 courage and Sundawn of a growing ministry to 
 gain here a little and there a little, the gift of a 
 godly conversation, to find, as the joy of service 
 deepens and the vision widens and the life takes on 
 precious experiences, what the grace of God can do 
 for rank faults and rough places of character. 
 Out of the very failures and helplessness of life and 
 of service there is a demonstration of the Spirit, of 
 gentle forces wrestling with the human in us to 
 make it over, be it ever so little, into Christ traits. 
 The answer to that prayer comes too in that strange 
 blessed conviction, that it is even so, that through 
 no merit of our own, but only by the gracious com- 
 fort of God's Holy Spirit, we are what we are, and 
 that out of all that is inapt and unmeet. He has 
 brought a simple trust that we can be more and 
 more meet for the Master's use. 
 
 How far, alas ! are most of us from attaining that 
 
GODLY CONVERSATION 26 
 
 godly conversation ! But it is yours in these pre- 
 paratory years to learn to yearn for it. And the 
 self-struggle with its lack, — ^yes, of special points of 
 character in which at times the lack seems so 
 chronic as to be almost irremediable — is the very 
 crisis in which to call to our constant succor the 
 Holy Spirit which so wonderfully heals our infirmi- 
 ties and rounds out priestly character. 
 
IV 
 
 DUE EXEECISE OF THE MINISTET 
 
 The " take heed " of the challenge in the Ordina- 
 tion OflB^ce puts responsibility just where it belongs 
 when it warns all who have to do with encouraging 
 the one thinking of the ministry to look to it that 
 there is promise that " he will exercise his ministry 
 duly." Misfits in the ministry are not seldom due 
 to the misfit of early advice given. To be sure this 
 caution may not be as much needed as the one to 
 guard against the opposite mistake of cold watering 
 the kindling of the flame of holy vocation, of which 
 something may be said elsewhere, but it is needed. 
 "While probably no one under our American condi- 
 tions is led to take Holy Orders as a mere matter 
 of family tradition and course, and while few now 
 live under the delusion that the ministry is a sort 
 of asylum for those who fail in other pursuits of 
 life, there is much to be desired in the sense of sa- 
 gacity not to say thoroughness with which prelimi- 
 nary advice should be given to those to whom the 
 possibility of Holy Orders occurs. To be duly 
 counseled to persevere in his intention — as the 
 
 26 
 
DUE EXERCISE OF THE MINISTRY 27 
 
 Canon puts it, — there is implied no perfunctory nor 
 shifted responsibility on the part of others who ad- , 
 vise, whatever be that of his " immediate Pastor, or, 
 if he have none, some Presbyter to whom he is per- 
 sonally known." The Canon requires this in the 
 interest of all concerned before the matter can in 
 most cases intelligently come before the bishop in 
 the sequence of the steps. 
 
 It is obvious that no ministry can be duly exer- 
 cised without the depth of purpose to fully conse- 
 crate it " to the honor of God and the edifying of 
 His Church." But we propose to treat each of 
 these aims by itself in our further consideration of 
 our series of topics and so leave them for the pres- 
 ent. That will enable us to stop now upon the due 
 exercise of the ministry in some of its aspects 
 which, though less profound and vital, are neverthe- 
 less of no slight consequence in an efficient clergy- 
 man's life. 
 
 Due exercise of the Holy Office breathes every- 
 where in the lofty vision of the Ordinal. It implies 
 a right heart and right method — the giving one's 
 self wholly to the ministry and the never ceasing 
 our labor, our care and diligence to make the 
 most of ourselves for it, and more especially in some 
 ordinary standards of activity that we may well 
 consider now. If he is not very much on his guard, 
 
28 APT AND MEET 
 
 there are many circumstances to delude a young 
 clergyman into the idea that so far as ordinary stand- 
 ards of efficiency are concerned, he is a privileged 
 character. There is apt to be a good deal of his time 
 that is not mapped out for him as it is for a business 
 man who must report to his office for a daily routine. 
 There is apt to be no such sharp and instant rebuke 
 of remissness in duty, to keep him up to the standard, 
 as he would be likely to find in other callings. 
 There is opportunity for a good deal of dawdling, 
 and a good deal of procrastination, not to say a 
 good deal of sheer recreancy to routine without any 
 immediate chiding save perhaps that of the con- 
 science. Provided there be the reporting at stated 
 hours of Service the " between-times " is often far 
 more at the disposal of the young clergyman than 
 he would find in any other serious calling. And if 
 in that between-times he does not keep himself up 
 to the mark, nobody will do it for him, for a while 
 at any rate. If he is not fixing his own high stand- 
 ard of what due exercise of a ministry ought to be 
 in the study, in the pastoral calling, in the self- 
 discipline, in the being " often up-stairs " in prayer 
 as was said of Father Carter, nobody for the time 
 may be the wiser, nobody will stand over him to 
 tell him to do it or drop the Ministry, after the 
 manner of a superior in an office. Shirking gen- 
 
DUE EXERCISE OF THE MINISTRY 29 
 
 erally brings no immediate retribution, if there is 
 the temptation to shirk. Neither does a show of 
 service without its sufficiency. In every large 
 modern business there is generally found some 
 searching system of inspection to keep all depart- 
 ments up to the mark. Periodically the data of 
 duty are scrutinized and any slighting or bungling 
 the job assigned to any one soon comes out to his 
 instant warning. If he is idling, or turning to his 
 own account the time he is supposed to be giving to 
 the business in hand, he soon hears of it in a way he 
 does not forget. If he only makes a show of doing 
 his work he soon has to face the consequences. 
 While there could, from the nature of the case, be 
 no such espionage over ministerial service, it might 
 fairly be asked whether some more thorough and 
 efficient use of the theory of inspection we have in 
 the Church might not have its advantage all around. 
 Stated inspections of care in keeping records, for 
 example, or of parish accounts, of time honestly 
 given to Sunday-school work, to missionary study 
 and instruction, to systematic pastoral calling and 
 ministrations to the sick, to wholesome study and 
 reading, to preparation for the pulpit messages — 
 something of that sort would certainly be in keep- 
 ing with modern methods of capitalizing energy to 
 the best result, to say nothing of the stimulus and 
 
30 APT AND MEET 
 
 search-warrant effect upon weak human nature. 
 Men sometimes do their best work by committing 
 themselves to courses of lectures or sermons which 
 compel them to systematic study and use of time, and 
 of course the stated hours of services do involve a 
 certain amount of discipline of time. But notwith- 
 standing all this, so much is the average clergyman 
 left to be the disposer of his own routine and the 
 shaper of his week's duties that nobody but himself 
 can be his Inspector. The due exercise of his 
 ministry will depend upon his rising above tempta- 
 tions to sloth, or slovenliness of habit, physical, in- 
 tellectual and spiritual. His people will indeed 
 shrewdly suspect if they do not detect such blem- 
 ishes, but the probability is their censorship will 
 express itself in general terms of dissatisfaction 
 rather than in specific counsels and in a desire for a 
 change of clergyman rather than in hope for 
 reform. 
 
 Every one of you means under God to make his 
 future ministry a successful ministry. It is each 
 one's purpose to make his own case one of a due ex- 
 ercise of his ministry. The vision before an earnest 
 and healthy-minded Candidate is one of hope and 
 heart. But sometimes notions of what success in 
 the ministry is are vague and unformed and the 
 sooner right ideals can be clarified and fixed, the 
 
DUE EXERCISE OF THE MINISTRY 31 
 
 better and the more intelligently the lines of prep- 
 aration for the ministry themselves become " apt 
 and meet." Such ideas involve at least three 
 things : 1. A right standard of success. 2. Con- 
 centration upon it and 3. A right motive in it. 
 
 First, then, how can we be sure that our working 
 theory, so to speak, as to the kind of clergymen we 
 wish to be is a sound one? How can we get just 
 the right conception of what a duly exercised min- 
 istry is ? One who often reads and reflects upon, 
 as I trust each one of you will do in devotional 
 hours, the charge to the Priest in the Ordinal, finds 
 there the Standard of Success once for all outlined. 
 It is singularly full and practical and free from mis- 
 conception. It explains the office and charge to 
 which you are to be called as one in which you are 
 to be " Messengers, Watchmen, and Stewards of the 
 Lord : to teach and to premonish, to feed and pro- 
 vide for the Lord's family ; to seek for Christ's sheep 
 that are dispersed abroad, and for His children who 
 are in the midst of this naughty world, that they 
 may be saved through Christ forever." Though 
 couched in general, not to say quaint terms, it 
 would be difficult to find a more compact or fructi- 
 fying form of statement of the lines on which all 
 that is really worthy of the name " success " in the 
 ministry, must be exhibited. Like an illuminated 
 
32 APT ANB MEET 
 
 window they might well color all the light that 
 floods in upon a Seminary course. I will here only 
 note the standard for you, without entering into 
 any exposition of its terms. Indeed if you make a 
 true and constant use of it in prayer and purpose, 
 your whole after lives will show its realization and 
 its joy. 
 
 But second, to be apt and meet after such a 
 Standard means strong tenacity of purpose as well 
 as clearness of vision towards it now. There is 
 such a danger in a Divinity School life as a listless 
 drift without the vim of oar-dip and pull towards a 
 given point that characterizes zeal and athleticism of 
 character. No such disposition as that does the 
 Ordinal know. Initiative and alertness and push- 
 ing towards a goal animate the picture there. The 
 very phrases are charged with tense vigor. 
 " Printed in your remembrance," " consider with 
 yourselves the end of the ministry," " see that ye 
 never cease your labor, your care and diligence 
 until you have done all that lieth in you according 
 to your bounden duty," " with how great care and 
 study ye ought to apply yourselves," " consider 
 how studious ye ought to be," "that you have 
 clearly determined, by God's grace, to give your- 
 selves wholly to this OflSce," " that as much as lieth 
 in you you will apply yourselves wholly to this one 
 
DUE EXERCISE OF THE MINISTRY 33 
 
 thing, and draw all your cares and studies this 
 way " — these are ringing words not merely for the 
 Ordination Service in which they are found, but for 
 proper Divinity School spirit and regime. So 
 there is the sizing of the mind towards the satisfy- 
 ing standards of success that reach so far beyond 
 any scale of bulk, or sound or statistics of the work. 
 Then third, back of the standard of success 
 and back of the sturdiness of aim in adhering to the 
 standard there is the really vital matter of the 
 motive in it all. And as to that there is no more op- 
 portune time for deep probing than in these shaping 
 years of your life. Confessedly motives are often- 
 times mixed and puzzling. And probably we must 
 ever allow for growth in good motives, especially 
 when they are fundamental to a career. Then, too, 
 misgivings as to our motives must be expected. 
 But with it all, one contemplating Holy Orders 
 does, I am convinced, after years of confidences 
 from honest lives, have some of his most blessed 
 and lasting demonstrations of the Holy Spirit in 
 the process which goes on in his own spirit of find- 
 ing the Comforter comforting and strengthening 
 him with the gradual consecration of his own mo- 
 tive into a surer and surer inward motion. Thence 
 comes not merely the consciousness of vocation to 
 the Holy Ministry but of profounder absorption in 
 
34 APT AND MEET 
 
 its higher ambitions. In a St. Paul this reached 
 that rare stage from which he could afla.rm " For 
 me to live is Christ." 
 
 This is the only safeguard against the subtile 
 ambition for self which may lurk even in what out- 
 wardly seems a successful ministry. There is 
 probably in the English language no more search- 
 ing, not to say startling disclosure of the peril of 
 that ambition than in the memorable sermon of 
 Mozley's on The Reversal of Human Judgment^ 
 which I commend to your careful reading. It has 
 been called by a clergyman, not of our own Church, 
 the "greatest sermon of modern times" and a 
 New England college Kesident says he reads it 
 once a year for its moral tonic. I will only quote 
 here one paragraph: "The truth is, wherever 
 there is action, effort, aim at certain objects and 
 ends; — wherever the flame of human energy 
 mounts up; all this may gather either round a 
 centre of pure and unselfish desire, or round a 
 centre of egotism : and no superiority in the sub- 
 ject of the work can prevent the lapse into the in- 
 ferior motive. In the most different fields of ob- 
 jects this may be the same : it is the quality of the 
 individual. Whatever he does, if there is a degen- 
 eracy in the temper of his mind, it all collects and 
 gathers, by a false direction which it receives from 
 
DUE EXERCISE OF THE MINISTBY 8S 
 
 the false centre of attraction, round himself, "^^ This 
 exposes the awful temptation to an ambitious min- 
 istry where the ambition is for self. It was on a 
 very pinnacle of the Temple that the Tempter asked 
 the Master to cast Himself down for self and so to 
 thwart His work for God. Outwardly it may 
 counterfeit success, but the motive is self-centred. 
 The ministry duly exercised is only a success be- 
 cause it is centred in Christ. 
 
TO THE HONOE OF GOD 
 
 The motive in the ministry is the vital point. 
 We have in the previous pages already touched 
 upon its determination of the due exercise of the 
 ministry. The challenge in the Ordinal, however, 
 goes much further. It distinctly applies the 
 motive test to the result produced by a ministry. 
 It implies that to be " apt and meet " the motive 
 is clear and fixed. We are of course here anticipat- 
 ing a condition of heart you are supposed to ap- 
 proximate on the day of your ordination, when 
 you are presented for that challenge. Here and 
 now you may have much still ahead of you in the 
 way of preparation for the right frame of heart 
 then as well as for the right familiarity with the 
 preliminary courses of study. Motives need train- 
 ing as well as memory or other intellectual or 
 spiritual faculties. Few can expect to find them- 
 selves at this stage what they hope to be at 
 ordination time. The very purpose of your pre- 
 scribed course is to afford opportunity for the 
 patient evolution of self on the high lines of vision 
 
 36 
 
TO THE HONOE OP GOD 37 
 
 of your vocation. It may be but the sign of an 
 honest and true heart now to be subject to misgivings 
 about motives and to have other evidences of the 
 need of careful attention to them and cultivation 
 of them. In a word no one must take it as an 
 occasion for losing heart if he finds it diflficult 
 to isolate his motives for treatment as he would, 
 or even to fully persuade himself whether they 
 are as single as he would wish. Granted that 
 sense of vocation which in itself is not always easy 
 to define other than as a leading of conscience and 
 life, God often shows us our way by successive 
 steps, without letting us see very far ahead, as He 
 did St. Paul at and just after the time of his con- 
 version when he had his work and his fitting into 
 its sphere gradually unfolded to him. A whole- 
 some Divinity School Course is as apt to be a 
 succession of self-revelations with headway in 
 character flashed by their light as of progress 
 in learning. So men grow towards their ministry. 
 They press forward with St. Paul towards the 
 mark for the prize of the high calling of God in 
 Christ Jesus, though with St. Paul there must be 
 the lifelong realization of something still to be 
 " apprehended." 
 
 If we put it then in some such way as this — 
 how to make the most of a course in motive train- 
 
38 . APT AND MEET 
 
 ing — it will perhaps invest the two remaining 
 topics of this series of addresses with more im- 
 mediate and live interest for us. For the Ordinal 
 makes very plain the two primary objects towards 
 which the motive of the true servant of Jesus 
 Christ must be more and more drawn. The one 
 is the Honor of God. The other is the Edification 
 of His Church. The first is the only one we shall 
 dwell upon to-day, leaving the other for the con- 
 cluding pages of this series. 
 
 Obviously in what is so strictly personal and 
 profound in character as motive we have to be 
 self-taught with the aid of that Holy Spirit 
 which searcheth the deep things of man. The 
 utmost that another can hope to do in the way 
 of this training is to throw out a few general sug- 
 gestions. 
 
 I think we are all conscious of an element of 
 vagueness and what is called obscurantism when 
 we attempt to point deliberate purpose towards 
 the Honor of God. The aim somehow seems to 
 lack sharpness of outline. Our own honor, or 
 the honor of some one or some institution in which 
 we are deeply interested, may have all the range 
 and roundness of the bulPs-eye of a target. The 
 motive which lies back of the seeking such honor 
 is perfectly identified and perfectly well under- 
 
TO THE HONOR OF GOD 39 
 
 stood. As Mozley intimates, self-seeking may blight 
 a whole ministry. But to experience the same 
 absorption in sighting the aim and the same con- 
 centration of powers upon carrying out the motive 
 where God's honor is concerned, sometimes, to 
 tell the truth, seems baffling, if not indeed beyond 
 us. Just what do we mean, and just how are we 
 to show that we mean it, when we speak of doing 
 anything for the glory of God ? How is our 
 ministry to become really actuated by anything 
 so much lifted above human motive? Is there 
 a falsetto note in it as perhaps a cynic would claim 
 for Keble's 
 
 ''be your strife 
 To lead on earth an angePs life^' ? 
 
 The simplest schooling in the reality of the ex- 
 perience of honoring God's name, and one which 
 would refute any denial or challenge of its positive 
 possession and sphere, is in sacred hymns and songs 
 of praise to God. This voices the honoring of God 
 with our words. The universal psalmody of the 
 Church and of the ages, the favorite hymns and 
 fervent uplifts which enter into and become part of 
 any religious life attuning some of its tenderest 
 sentiment, need but be cited to reveal the honor- 
 ing of God as almost a veritable instinct of 
 
40 APT AND MEET 
 
 humanity. No one need doubt that he knows what 
 it is to honor God who has ever "come before 
 His presence with a song." And here is an oppor- 
 tunity for decidedly strengthening a habit of 
 praise. The thousand and one distractions which 
 break in upon worship we realize are distractions 
 of praise as well as of prayer. 
 
 ^^ Hosannas languish on our tongues." 
 
 Eesolutely and constantly must the habit be culti- 
 vated — as it can be in these Chapel Services — to put 
 more devotion into our praise. The glorias we sing 
 can become the true exercises for it. All our chants 
 and anthems and hymns as well as spoken thanksgiv- 
 ings, up to the High Eucharistic praise itself, may 
 constitute the very preparatory course we need for 
 self-instruction in that aspiration of the Psalmist, 
 " Praise the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within 
 me praise His Holy Name." For your own soul's 
 sake and for the sake of your future congregations 
 you can find no better qualification for leadership 
 in worship than that. That marks the true motive 
 back of all Liturgiology and of all Ceremonial. 
 
 Further, your work, as well as your worship, will 
 eventually evince careful self-schooling, or the lack 
 of it, in fostering and acting upon promptings for the 
 Honor of God. It is of the first importance that 
 
TO THE HONOR OF GOD 41 
 
 you should accustom yourselves even in the day's 
 work of your Divinity School life to do things be- 
 cause they may accredit your calling and so the 
 One who has called you. Very often this will be 
 to simply try to overcome some common fault be- 
 cause it will if not corrected injure your usefulness 
 out in the ministry. If, for example, you detect in 
 yourself signs of being opinionated, of an aggres- 
 sive rather than a receptive attitude, of lying 
 down upon an easy-going routine rather than of 
 alert initiative and fidelity to study, of conceit, of 
 carelessness in personal habit or social usage, of 
 eccentricity or chronic mannerism, of pugnacity or 
 moroseness of disposition, of lack of system or of 
 esjprit de corjps^ — these and like limitations on the 
 later usefulness, not to say present progress, could 
 all be dealt with eflPectively when one sets about it 
 from the profound consideration that the very 
 peccadilloes of the ministry oftentimes sadly inter- 
 fere with its effect as an agency for the honor of 
 God. 
 
 Then just to learn how to bear things for Christ's 
 sake is another most blessed and most potent edu- 
 cation in the motive of honoring God. And the 
 alphabet of trial in the years of preparation is one 
 by which the future priest learns to spell out the 
 sentences and chapters of struggle and cross-bear- 
 
42 APT AND MEET 
 
 ing in that never-ceasing labor and care and dili- 
 gence which are to come. The pinch of close 
 management in money matters, the not infrequent 
 anxiety about support of others of close kin in some 
 measure dependent on us, disappointments, lone- 
 liness, fear of impaired health, and many another 
 burden which is not strange to Divinity School 
 years, we may brood over or learn to bravely bear. 
 And the one reflection above all others which will 
 teach and sweeten that lesson will be the sense of 
 opportunity to bear them not for ourselves, but for 
 the honor of God. And that aim learned will 
 communicate a genius to the whole ministry. Out 
 of it as out of almost no other trait will men take 
 knowledge of you that you have been with Jesus. 
 You will attain a new measure of being apt and 
 meet to exercise your ministry duly for the honor 
 of God. Felicitously can be fitted into any life — 
 and it is a good midday prayer in the workaday 
 hours — that older Collect for St. Andrew's Day 
 from the First Book of Edward VI which in- 
 culcates the signal cross-bearing of St. Andrew 
 back of the following his Lord of the other more 
 familiar Collect in our Prayer Book : 
 
 Almighty God, which hast geven suche grace 
 to thy Apostle Say net Andrew that he counted 
 the sharp and painful death of the crosse to be an 
 
TO THE HONOR OF GOD 43 
 
 high honor and a great glory : Graunt us to 
 take and esteme all troubles and adversities 
 which shal come unto us for thy sake, as things 
 proflytablefor us toward the obtaining of everlast- 
 ing life : through Jesus Christ our Lorde. 
 
VI 
 
 THE EDIFYING OP HIS CHUECH 
 
 If every one who is admitted to Holy Orders 
 may truly be called " the child of many prayers " 
 it is notable how much especial prayer the Church 
 offers for him that his ministry may produce result 
 in the edifying of the Church. The ordination 
 Scriptures, collects, vows, exhortations. Litany and 
 the Ember Prayers in one form or another impress 
 upon us that we earnestly consider with ourselves 
 " the end of the Ministry towards the children of 
 God, towards the Spouse and Body of Christ." 
 To be " apt and meet " then with a clarified 
 and controlling motive to make the ministry count 
 on unmistakable lines of upbuilding of the Church 
 in truth and in practice should be the early and 
 constant aspiration of one contemplating the Holy 
 Office. 
 
 It is hardly conceivable that any one would 
 seriously take any step from a sense of vocation 
 without some general notion of proving useful 
 to the Church. But general notions will always 
 bear scrutiny. The times are times of higher 
 
 44 
 
THE EDIFYING OF HIS OHUBCH 45 
 
 criticism of self as well as of Scripture, and in both 
 fields the best safeguard against unhealthy higher 
 criticism is sound, patient discrimination of right 
 from wrong principles. Take that general notion 
 then that is more or less a vision before you as 
 you picture yourself in years to come with your 
 parish and place in the ministry making things 
 move around you, as you hope to, and having a 
 chance to carry out some preaching and working 
 plans of your own which you believe will tell upon 
 the welfare of your congregation. There is this 
 sense in which the Candidate is the Father of the 
 Priest, as the child is Father of the man. And that 
 pleasure of hope is something to be thankful for 
 all your days. The self you project into the future 
 from a healthy outlook generally exhibits the evi- 
 dence of a better self. But you need to make the 
 most of the opportunity to have an eye to the very 
 best shaping of your ideals. You should distinctly 
 aspire to edification in the truth. You should be 
 satisfied with nothing short of the highest con- 
 ceptions of what Church life and progress are. You 
 do not desire to work in any plane lower than the 
 one to which you can, by the grace of God, be 
 equal. You are aware that there is such a thing 
 as building upon the foundation of " gold, silver, 
 precious stones, wood, hay, stubble." You are 
 
46 APT AND MEET 
 
 determined, so far as lieth in you, to build upon 
 the foundation which is Jesus Christ. 
 
 St. Paul has carefully outlined for us what we 
 might reverently call the motive of God Himself 
 in giving us the grace of the ministry according 
 to the measure of the gift of Christ. It is " for the 
 perfecting of the saints, unto the work of minister- 
 ing, unto the building up of the body of Christ." 
 This the Apostle seems to reveal to us as the 
 very mind of Christ for His Ministry. It is the 
 orbiting of its sphere as of the "stars in their 
 courses." 
 
 There can be no higher motive than to try to 
 have revealed in us this true apotheosis of the 
 Ministry. Note accurately its terms. There is 
 an ultimate and attesting result in view, to wit, 
 the perfecting of the saints. There are two cor- 
 related processes leading up to that result which 
 are immediate and essential, the work of minister^ 
 ing and the building up of the body of Christ. As 
 a motive to interpret itself into our personal 
 action it presents itself something like this: I 
 must " devote myself soul, body and spirit with all 
 their powers and faculties " to this ministry, this 
 spiritual service. I must apply that service stead- 
 fastly to the building up of the Church. And all 
 this must be with the firm determination and pur- 
 
THE EDIFYING OF HIS CHURCH 4:1 
 
 pose to show result primarily in the perfecting 
 holiness in the fear of God among those committed 
 to my charge. Here we have the secret of a sin- 
 gleness of aim. The theory of our calling is 
 blazoned over our pathway, however difficult it 
 may be to follow it. Every man may see here how 
 to frame the headings for the really vital statistics 
 of his ministry, no matter what other showing he 
 may make or the world may judge him by. Back 
 of every parish register and every Convention Re- 
 port and every current inventory and every speak- 
 ing well, or speaking ill of him and his work by 
 men, his own private memorandum m /oro eon- 
 scienticB must ever keep a keen and anxious eye 
 upon what comes under these three items. 1. Marks 
 of my work as a real work of ministering in spirit- 
 ual things. 2. Proofs of upbuilding of the work 
 of the Church, and 3. Tokens of Grace upon my 
 people and of their growth in grace. It is of course 
 impossible to know the full contents under any 
 of these three heads, but on the other hand it is pos- 
 sible not to be ignorant of them. Enough will 
 come to one who scans such data at any rate to 
 cheer or chide him with insight into the true state 
 of affairs and with a great deal more significance 
 than the big or little showing of some more super- 
 ficial statistics. Size and sound may, and generally 
 
48 APT AND MEET 
 
 do, go with the working of such ideal motives, and 
 sometimes the saddest evidence of the lack of them 
 is in the meagre statistic. There is nothing wrong 
 about those other tallies of genuine accomplish- 
 ment just noted. And there is a liability of cant 
 lurking about an avowed disregard of ordinary 
 standards of success when they disclose lack of 
 right or virile motive. But all the same the deep 
 peace and comfort of the priest must depend chiefly 
 upon his tenacity of purpose in keeping the motive 
 of his ministry true to the single lines named by 
 St. Paul as above. 
 
 We may dwell upon each one of them a little as 
 they are all closely allied to the Edification of 
 Christ's Church. 
 
 Preeminently the work of ministering must be a 
 spiritual ministration. Whatever else the priest 
 may upbuild, he is first of all committed to the up- 
 building of the Kingdom of Christ. And his habit 
 of ministration must be formed accordingly. No 
 proof is needed here that anything that contributes 
 to the uplift of humanity in some measure is 
 auxiliary to the spread of Christ's Kingdom. And 
 a priest with varied parts may use many wider 
 fields of ministration. But his reason for being in 
 the priesthood is that he has had the vocation to 
 those ministerial gifts of a special sort. St. Paul 
 
THE EDIFYING OF HIS CHURCH 49 
 
 made a classification of some of them with direct 
 reference to his epitome of the purpose of the min- 
 istry just suggested for our high motive. " He gave 
 some to be apostles ; and some prophets ; and some 
 evangelists ; and some pastors and teachers." 
 These active agencies notably sample those of 
 spiritual import. And so while there is no reason 
 that we should not have good administrators and 
 financiers and leaders in philanthropic movements, 
 the spiritual values of these interests must ever be 
 sufficient to support the main and direct spiritual 
 values of the ministry as it reflects the prophetic, 
 priestly and kingly character of Christ. The young 
 man who goes into the ministry in these days has 
 to be particularly on his guard against allowing these 
 spiritual values to be submerged. What doth it 
 profit the priest if he covers the whole range of gen- 
 eral current activities for good and he loses the spirit- 
 ual glow from his own chancel and his own pews ! 
 
 And then a high purpose to strive that the bounds 
 of Christ's Kingdom may be unfailingly enlarged 
 will make one eager to spend time and energy and 
 thought intelligently upon that which does make 
 forward movement in the Church. The phrase 
 " building up " is not an uncommon one with refer- 
 ence to the ministry. We speak of " building up " 
 a reputation, " building up " a treasury, " building 
 
50 APT AND MEET 
 
 up " a congregation, " building up " an institution, 
 a following, a party, a literature, a movement. 
 These may, or may not, amount to building up the 
 Church. They may cause bloom, and then again 
 they may leave blight. As ends in themselves they 
 are poor makeshifts for the motive we have been 
 urging, bound to perish in the using. Success so 
 written is like a temporary electric sign that blazes 
 over your sidewalk a while and then goes to the 
 rubbish heap. 
 
 And the worse feature in such misuse of energy 
 in building up everything but the pure religion of 
 Jesus Christ, is its disclosure of want of confidence 
 in His Kingdom, especially in its power. All these 
 other things would not have that close attention 
 when they become diversions from the Church it- 
 self, if the Church filled the field of vision. It sug- 
 gests that text in the trade-mark of the South Sea 
 Company of the eighteenth century. The company 
 carried credulity and the gambling spirit of the age 
 to the point of becoming a synonym for wildest 
 speculation in its designation as " The South Sea 
 Bubble." To the fore in its trade-mark was the 
 Latin of the text, " In Thee, O Lord, have I put my 
 trust." Such a profession of trust was an arrant 
 misplacement. And so the absorbing motive in an 
 honest and true heart to work for the edification of 
 
THE EDIFYING OF HIS CHURCH 51 
 
 the Church will believe in the power of the Church. 
 Secondary methods will always be secondary. 
 And that belief, with that motive, will tend to 
 emancipate the ministry from all sorts of claptrap 
 methods of getting money for the Church, and all 
 sorts of circus methods of drawing crowds, and all 
 sorts of catering the faith to a popular palate and all 
 sorts of loss of head or of backbone. 
 
 Church progress in truth and work will register 
 itself in terms of life, life of the individual and life 
 of the congregation which ye serve. It means a 
 springtime to a dead congregation, a harvest to one 
 growing in grace. You plant and water and God 
 will give the increase. The perfecting of the saints 
 will approve His favor and gracious goodness with 
 you. Your epistle will write itself in their hearts 
 as you become the faithful messenger. Your lead- 
 ing them by still waters will reward you as the 
 Watchman of their pathway. Your stewardship of 
 sacrament and truth will bring them more and more 
 closely to His sacrifice and His promise. Apt and 
 meet to duly exercise your ministry here to the 
 honor of God and the edifying of His Church, may 
 you fight the good fight, and finish your course, 
 and keep the faith so that you may be apt and 
 meet for the crown of righteousness which the Lord, 
 the righteous Judge, shall give you at that day. 
 
VII 
 
 THE MAN OF GOD 
 
 Jesus Christ, Very God of Very God, was made 
 very man, that every man might be made a man of 
 God. This covers every high ideal of humanity. 
 It gives focus to all the light of the world that 
 Christ is. It makes a kindling point for all the light 
 of man to burn with the desire to find, to follow, to 
 be changed into the image of Jesus Christ. The 
 ideal furnishes a singularly clear and constant pur- 
 pose in life for every one of us. The uplift of vision 
 is towards attaining the qualities and the gifts of 
 the man of God. The heights may seem almost too 
 dizzy for us to climb. The present personal stage 
 of realization may strike us as almost prohibitory. 
 The stretch of distance and difficulty may dismay 
 us. But once the vision possesses us, we cannot be 
 as we were before. Something new has dawned 
 upon the life. The sight may become clouded, 
 darkened, lost. It cannot be forgotten that God 
 has spoken some time in vision to His servant. The 
 aspiration has registered itself in the life. 
 
 That blessed vision may be very full and open to 
 us at times of new steps towards the work of the 
 
 62 
 
THE MAN OF GOD 53 
 
 ministry. When whisperings first come to us of the 
 possibility of our call to it ; when they have deepened 
 into the strange, sweet conviction that we are surely 
 under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, step by step 
 — oftentimes shrinking steps, too — inevitably mov- 
 ing under that call ; when we become actual candi- 
 dates for Holy Orders; when we begin our so 
 determining Divinity School life; when we enter 
 upon a new year of that life ; just as when the un- 
 speakable fervor of the Ordination hour comes, 
 or any signal joy of the after-ministry is ours, the 
 aspiration to be more nearly a man of God is high 
 and strong and vital. And, if we would but know 
 it, in an honest and true heart it always, more or 
 less, in the subconsciousness, is possessing us with a 
 chiding, correcting, inciting sense of standard. 
 
 The preparatory course of a candidate for Holy 
 Orders, without some such animating, controlling 
 purpose, would be like a world without a sun. The 
 whole training would lack orbit and light and 
 system. But you who are here are but typical, 
 I believe, of that elevation of aim which is a happy 
 sign of ingenuous young manhood, and especially of 
 our young American manhood, in the ranks of both 
 clergy and laity to-day. To be no less than men of 
 God, consecrated to some ennobling service, whether 
 in the Church, or philanthropies, or civic opportuni- 
 
54 APT AND MEET 
 
 ties — SO pressing with the call for loyal, alert 
 laymen — or in the Holy Ministry, this is firing the 
 imagination and shaping the careers of an increas- 
 ing number in very contrast with — yes, perhaps, in 
 protest against — the self-centredness which is so 
 prevalent in this age. Not to mention other evi- 
 dence of this, the Brotherhood of St. Andrew is 
 every year adding to a radiant roll, already not 
 small, of those who, with independent means, are 
 devoting their time and competence mainly to the 
 high objects of that true Twentieth Century 
 Brotherhood. And the stirrings within your own 
 souls — which I venture to think I do not mistake — 
 reveal to you, if you have at all divined their mean- 
 ing, something of the same happy kind. 
 
 There are other things, of course, that float before 
 the mind in the forecast of the Ministry. To be a 
 man of education is one of them. Long before the 
 challenge in the Ofiice for the Ordination of the 
 Deacon the thoughtful candidate has wrestled with 
 the question how he is to be " apt and meet for his 
 learning" to exercise his ministry duly. It is no 
 new thing to you. And it has impressed you with 
 the value and use of opportunity to study, and you 
 are here determined to make the most of it. There 
 looms up before you that question you are to answer 
 in your ordination to the priesthood : " Will you 
 
THE MAN OF GOD 55 
 
 be diligent ... in reading the Holy Scriptures, 
 and in such studies as help to the knowledge of the 
 same ? " There is not only the wholesome dread of 
 being a clerical ignoramus, but there is the positive 
 hope to attain the power and the pleasure of being 
 well-informed for the work's sake. Nothing of a 
 smattering or a shirking student enters into your 
 ideal. On the contrary, all that earnest and con- 
 scientious work can bring you, you mean to get. 
 
 To be a man of influence is another proper ambi- 
 tion. Not to be a mere clerical cipher, whatever 
 our post. Kailroads have a way when they put 
 freight cars out of commission and turn them into 
 side-track usage of putting a naught before the old 
 number of the car, whatever it might have been. 
 The cipher shows that its numbering on the main 
 line is nil. And at the threshold of your ministry 
 you say to yourself, " God forbid that I should ever 
 have my count in the main work of the ministry 
 fronted with a cipher ! Whether in that which is 
 least or in that which is much of the direct work of 
 my holy calling, be it mine never to cease my labor, 
 ray care and diligence, until I have done all that 
 lieth in me, according to my bounden duty to be so 
 faithful that God may give the increase." Only 
 death or absolute disability should stay that ambi- 
 tion. Only such ambition can be proof against 
 
56 APT AND MEET 
 
 idling away or secularizing holy vows, or lapsing 
 into the condition of an amateur clergyman when 
 something else takes first place in the life. Pictures 
 of your future sphere, where in some way that will 
 count in pastoral efficiency, in pulpit power, in leader- 
 ship, in teaching the truth, in winning the love of 
 your people, in seeing your labor tell, in turning 
 the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the 
 just, in sanctifying whatever gifts, whatever oppor- 
 tunities may furnish you zest, all these afford a 
 stimulus and a spirit of attack which the Holy Spirit 
 will bless to the uttermost. No man, who long be- 
 forehand does not see himself astir in that fond 
 dreamland parish which is one day to be his, is 
 likely to be very much astir with real influence in 
 it when he treads the solid earth of his field. 
 
 To be a man of the finer sense is a further trait 
 for a candidate for the ministry to covet earnestly 
 as one of the best gifts. To eliminate all manner 
 of coarseness, and reach, as the grace of God will 
 help one to reach, a refinement of fibre which is the 
 mark, not only of the gentleman, but of that gen- 
 tleness in Christ which St. Paul tells us must be 
 the attitude of the minister of Christ unto all men : 
 — here, indeed, is a very marvel of transformation 
 held out to us ; so unpromising to most of us as we 
 take account of what is to be done to effect any- 
 
THE MAN OF GOD 57 
 
 thing like it in our own disposition and character 
 that it seems almost a counsel of perfection. We 
 say of it : " It is too wonderful for me, I cannot 
 attain unto it." It means absolute punctiliousness 
 in all the little amenities of life. A clergyman 
 should always be known for his promptness in such 
 little matters as answering notes and the like ; for 
 his thoughtfulness in deferring when possible to 
 the wishes and convenience of others ; for his sensi- 
 tive consideration for others ; for his scrupulous 
 care never to intrude his purely personal tastes or 
 habits upon others — far less into his ministrations 
 to others. If he uses tobacco, for example, he 
 should never be guilty of that which is sometimes 
 simply prohibitory to his usefulness in a sick-cham- 
 ber, the carrying of the odor of it in his clothes in 
 visiting, and, which is so offensive to many wor- 
 shipers and communicants, making the chancel 
 redolent of stale smoke as he goes about it 
 when he officiates. As you have the longing 
 to develop this finer sense you will determine 
 with yourselves how to guard against every 
 temptation to coarseness in speech, in manner, in 
 mind, in method, in bearing towards your brethren 
 in the ministry, in tastes of reading and recreation, 
 and to resolve upon thoroughgoing application to 
 the breeding of Divine grace. 
 
58 APT AND MEET 
 
 But all these and other ways of looking forward 
 to ideals are subordinate to and illuminated by that 
 dominating desire to be the man of God. That 
 blends and vitalizes them all. Let it be clearly cut 
 now. Apply yourself and your prayer to its tak- 
 ing hold of you as a veritable " one-idea " of your 
 future character and work. With it as a ruling 
 idea all the other high aspirations will fall into 
 their proper function and symmetry. Every one 
 can realize it as God will give him grace. The at- 
 mosphere of this Divinity School has sent out and 
 with God's help will send out men braced in many 
 other ways for finding the true joy of the Ministry. 
 The school prayer has been and will be realized 
 that they may go out " with an awful sense of the 
 honor and danger of the trust to which they are to 
 be called " ; " with sound minds and moderated de- 
 sires." But these qualifications will be sadly 
 defective if, with them, they do not go out " with a 
 spirit of holy zeal and self-denial." 
 
 In subsequent talks to you I hope to follow up 
 this ideal with some of its phases, helps, and re- 
 wards. But be clear-eyed and open-eyed now to all 
 the inspiration, all the enthusiasm of the one vision 
 over the threshold of the school, over the threshold 
 of the year. Servants of the God-man, be ye seers 
 of the Man of God. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE STEWAEDSHIP OP TIME-TIME 
 FOE DEVOTIOIsr 
 
 We are glad to get to work again. If I at all know 
 your spirit, I believe I may confidently greet you, 
 as I do, with hearty welcome at the opening of a 
 new year of our Divinity School life, with that 
 sentiment. Not that the long summer interval is 
 meant to be, or has been, a period without work. 
 Allowing for some wholesome vacation, I take for 
 granted that you have faithfully acted upon that 
 principle of the economy we study to attain in the 
 Divinity School course, which assigns the summer- 
 time of cessation from routine school work for 
 courses of reading to fill out lecture-room work, or 
 for some practical experience of service among the 
 people. This really stands for that self-schooling 
 and initiative in study which every true clergyman 
 of the Church finds so needful in his ministry. 
 
 But we come together now eager again to make 
 the most of our Divinity School life. And dur- 
 ing the coming year, from time to time, I am hop- 
 ing to speak to you as a Bishop to Candidates for 
 
 the holy ministry as well as dean of the school. I 
 
 59 
 
60 APT AND MEET 
 
 feel that I have some exceptional privileges in 
 meeting you in this chapel. One cannot read the 
 ordination vows, the ember prayers we are saying 
 this week, or the canons bearing upon the relation 
 of a Bishop to the candidates, without being im- 
 pressed with the closeness and the consequence of 
 that relationship in the conception of it by the 
 Church. It is a relationship which neither can rel- 
 egate to a third party. The Bishop's vow to be 
 faithful in ordaining, sending or laying hands upon 
 others, the prayer that the Bishop may lay hands 
 suddenly on no man, are full of the significance of 
 the responsibility. And then it is well for us to 
 recall some of the exact terms of the canon con- 
 cerning candidates, not forgetting how carefully 
 the Church tries to guard all the approaches to the 
 reception of the candidate with credentials of 
 character and studies. Canon 3. § I. (1) The 
 superintendence of all candidates for Holy Orders, 
 both as to their daily life and as to the direction of 
 their theological studies, pertains to the Bishop of 
 the Diocese or Missionary District to which they 
 belong. 
 
 (iii) Every candidate shall pursue his studies 
 diligently under proper direction ; he shall not in- 
 dulge in vain or trifling conduct, or in amusements 
 unfavorable to godly and studious habits and to that 
 
TIME FOR DEVOTION 61 
 
 good report which becomes a person preparing for 
 the Holy Ministry. 
 
 § III. (1) Every candidate for Holy Orders 
 shall report himself to the Ecclesiastical Authority 
 personally or by letter, four times a year, in the 
 Ember weeks, giving account of his manner of life 
 and progress in his studies ; and if he fail to make 
 such report to the satisfaction of the Ecclesiastical 
 Authority, his name may be stricken from the list 
 of Candidates. 
 
 The language of the Canon is very plain and 
 specific in fixing a supervision " both as to their 
 daily life and as to the direction of their theolog- 
 ical studies," as a duty of a Bishop to a candidate. 
 Sometimes, to be sure, a Bishop finds that his op- 
 portunities for doing this, beyond indicating in a 
 general way where a candidate shall study, are 
 limited and the pressure of modern episcopal duty 
 makes it hard for many Bishops to come into the 
 constant touch with their candidates they would 
 wish. But circumstances here favor, at least so far 
 as my episcopate is concerned, opportunities for all 
 these in a measure that I cannot disregard and must 
 in conscience attempt to meet so far as I can with 
 God's help. And now I would bid you consider 
 earnestly the matter of the " Stewardship of Time." 
 
 With the taking up of the daily Divinity School 
 
62 APT AND MEET 
 
 course we begin to " go by the clock " more than we 
 have been when by ourselves. Lectures are 
 scheduled, hours for chapel services are resumed, 
 and the day more or less mapped out. Now, it is 
 one thing to drift along through all these as a mere 
 current or drag of class-room, chapel or other oc- 
 cupations. It is quite another thing to feel a sense 
 of responsibility for each dsiy and to take advan- 
 tage of these helps to turn it to account. In the one 
 case accountability for our time rests upon us very 
 lightly. In the other case a profound conviction of 
 stewardship, of having every day entrusted to us 
 that we may improve it, deepens within us as a 
 habit of mind and shapes in no small degree our 
 whole ministerial character. In the one case an 
 idle or a desultory or a frittered-away ministry 
 may result. In the other conscience grows more 
 and more sensitive to time thrown away, and the 
 clergyman, as he thinks it over, is in something the 
 frame of mind that even a high-minded heathen 
 once found himself when he said, " I have lost a 
 day, I have not done a single good deed." And 
 here you are fixing many of such habits once for all. 
 There are different parts of this stewardship of 
 time to be considered. Leaving for later treatment 
 such topics as a time for work, for recreation, etc., 
 the only one to which I shall specifically refer at 
 
TIME FOR DEVOTION 63 
 
 this time is faithfulness in JSnding time for devo- 
 tion. To some extent that faithfulness is put to 
 the test by the chapel services, ordered as they are 
 by the Prayer Book provision for every day. It 
 will be a question of carefulness or carelessness, of 
 resoluteness or irresoluteness, of easy-going self- 
 favoring or of high, prompt purpose. And even if 
 we successfully overcome that inertness which is so 
 tempting to absenteeism from early celebrations or 
 afternoon services, there is the further present- 
 mindedness to be cultivated in the services them- 
 selves, the schooling to keep our thoughts on what 
 we are doing or saying, which is so important a mat- 
 ter for us to learn here, if we would acquire the 
 fixed habit for our ministry. And I need scarcely 
 deprecate the temptation which sometimes comes 
 even to a divinity student to omit chapel in order 
 to find time for study which has been crowded out 
 of study time. A sensitive stewardship over time 
 for our public devotion will easily resist any such 
 temptation as that, and realize that in the real char- 
 acter building of the Divinity School the chapel 
 devotions take by no means the least part. 
 
 But who can speak too strongly of the vital im- 
 portance of realizing how much the time spent in 
 the private devotions is to tell upon the daily life 
 and work ! Only your room and God can keep the 
 
64 APT AND MEET 
 
 record of that. But I will venture to give some 
 hints which you may find helpful : 
 
 I. Have some good book of prayer — some good 
 book with the true spirit of the Church, like 
 " Horaa Sacrae," or Bishop Andrewes' " Devotions," 
 or Jeremy Taylor's prayers in " Holy Living and 
 Dying." Use this work to absorb into your prayers 
 wider interest of prayer and to cultivate a happy 
 phraseology of prayer. It will also help you to 
 continuous prayer minimizing distractions. This 
 need not be at all a substitute for your own pour- 
 ing out of heart in your own words ; it will only 
 supply stimulus to it and supplement it. The fervor 
 of your own heart will soon fuse any relics of 
 archaism in the older prayers, and even their 
 Scripturalism and quaintness will last infinitely bet- 
 ter than the mere confectionery of many modern 
 devotional manuals. 
 
 II. Bead with habitual and intelligent devotional 
 instinct some of the Word of God. Do not confuse 
 your lectures and lessons upon the truth with your 
 own devotional use of it. Get all you can out of 
 the glow of truth in your own experience, morning 
 and night. It will one day vitalize your sermons. 
 
 III. Always, if possible, have some biography 
 of a holy man on your reading-desk, varying it now 
 and then with the reading of a spiritual sermon for 
 
TIME FOR DEVOTION 65 
 
 your soul's health. This is one of the best possible 
 helps to spiritual depth and earnestness, and will 
 create hunger most wholesome for more of the same 
 sort of spiritual food. 
 
 IV. Try one very Lord's day to find, more than 
 on other days, the refreshment of soul that comes 
 from more prayer and more holy reading. This 
 will get to be a part of the conscience for the Sun- 
 day. The stewardship of the day will not seem com- 
 plete without it. 
 
 V. Withal pray constantly for the Holy Spirit. 
 "Ye have need to pray earnestly for His Holy 
 Spirit," says the ordinal. So the sense of steward- 
 ship for devotional time week-day and Sunday will 
 bless and sweeten all the other occupations, and one 
 of the prof oundest convictions of your lives, as year 
 follows year, will be that the effectual, fervent 
 prayer of a righteous man availeth much. And 
 you will have sounded a joy deep and rare in your 
 whole ministry. 
 
IX 
 
 THE STEWAEDSmP OF TIME— EIGHT USE 
 OF EETIEEMEITT 
 
 In preceding pages I tried to impress upon you 
 how a proper sense of our stewardship of time 
 fixes the responsibility of setting apart time for 
 devotion. Let us now follow that responsibility a 
 little further. And a caution constantly confront- 
 ing me in what I say, and, I believe, needful for you 
 in everything pertaining to the devotional life, is to 
 avoid unreality, to be our genuine selves, to have no 
 spiritual stiltedness or smug professionalism, to 
 wear no mask to ourselves, not to give out — like a 
 phonograph with its metallic artificiality — what 
 some one else has talked into us. Our devotional 
 life must first of all be spontaneous and our very 
 own. 
 
 There is a phrase which St. John (6 : 15) gives us 
 of Our Lord which is full of suggestiveness here, — 
 " Himself alone." It was when the Master, after 
 He had fed the five thousand, departed into a moun- 
 tain " Himself alone." St. Matthew and St. Mark 
 both tell us He took the retirement for prayer. 
 
 66 
 
RIGHT USE OF RETIREMENT 67 
 
 " He went up into a mountain apart to pray." 
 " He departed into a mountain to pray." 
 
 This loneliness, this being by Himself, was, be it 
 distinctly noted, a matter of His own purpose and 
 choice. It was, in a sense, of His own deliberate 
 making. It stands out in that way as over and 
 above the essential loneliness of humanity which 
 He exhibited in its prof oundest and most mysterious 
 phase. He was in one sense the loneliest man that 
 ever lived. Alone He trod the winepress ; alone 
 He was when they all forsook Him and fled ; alone 
 in Gethsemane, and alone on the Cross, with that 
 awful loneliness which uttered the cry : " My God, 
 My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? " That was 
 laid upon Him and was part of the deep mystery 
 of His redemptive work. No human being ever 
 had a lot involving loneliness like unto His loneli- 
 ness. 
 
 And yet, superadded to this inherent and unique 
 sense of being alone, the Son of God made it a 
 habit, it would seem, to seek opportunity to be by 
 Himself, to go apart from the multitude into still- 
 ness and solitude, that He might refresh His own 
 spirit of devotion. He made it a point of con- 
 science to make time for this. It was part of the 
 discipline of His perfect character. It communi- 
 cated part of the charm of His beauty of holiness. 
 
68 APT AND MEET 
 
 It, we may well believe, had to do with the secret 
 of His poise and strength in every crisis and in 
 every constancy of His human life. 
 
 Now an honest sense of vocation to that ministry 
 which comes from Him, means many a lonely hour 
 that a true-hearted man cannot escape if he would. 
 And do not think some strange thing has happened 
 unto you if you have each one his share of this. 
 To feel inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take 
 upon you this Office and Ministration throws each 
 upon himself in the very individualizing of such a 
 conviction and plan of life. You seem to yourself 
 picked out and, in a measure, isolated from others. 
 And there are experiences, wrestlings with self, 
 with circumstances, with burdens to be borne, with 
 poor health, with dejection and disappointments 
 and limitations, which are especially apt to beset 
 the preparatory years of a candidate for Holy Or- 
 ders. It is simply part of the fitting of self into 
 sphere. A man is all the better for it when he 
 comes up to his ordination. It all has to do with 
 the making of the true priest. And the sooner one 
 understands this, and takes it as it comes, and tries 
 to turn it to good account in character building, the 
 sooner he finds it the safeguard against allowing it 
 to become misdirected into morbid or cheerless 
 channels. These phases of loneliness, through 
 
EIGHT USE OF RETIREMENT 69 
 
 which a divinity student almost always passes, in 
 their right use and discipline tell upon all his after 
 usefulness, and enable him, as we say, to hold him- 
 self better in hand. But that loneliness comes any- 
 way. It is not a matter of our own planning and 
 devising. Our own will and choice have very little 
 to do with it. We are born unto it as the sparks 
 fly upward. We have to take all that into account 
 before we reach the question of an initiative in 
 making retirement for ourselves after the manner 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 And, be careful to mark, it is such voluntary 
 seizing of time and opportunity to be by ourselves 
 that we are now especially advising. This is not 
 something that will take care of itself, like a meal 
 hour or a chapel service. The individual must 
 rigidly and persistently put method into it himself, 
 or it will not be attended to. There are few things, 
 indeed, more wasteful and slothful with " the day's 
 work " of a divinity student than to have no clock- 
 strokes which mean anything to him other than 
 those comparatively few hours noted on the bulle- 
 tin-board for the assembling for various purposes. 
 
 My counsel then is that at the very beginning of 
 the term each one should fix for himself some 
 periods of retirement, and then should be careful to 
 make right and blessed use of that retirement. 
 
70 APT AND MEET 
 
 That will give something of a wholesome cloistered 
 life to the Divinity School body as a whole, with- 
 out at all depriving it of that balancing influence, 
 so necessary, of family life with each other, and 
 contact with the world in which you are to minis- 
 ter. It is not at all an ascetic or a cult ideal. It 
 is only to make due and intelligent provision all 
 along, through the course, for the sweet suasion of 
 God's Holy Spirit, as it searches, in quiet and self- 
 communing, the deep things of man. Map out the 
 time, then, for it conscientiously. 
 
 And among many ways of making a right use of 
 such systematic retirement, I would suggest the 
 following : 
 
 1. Always have ready at hand some good devo- 
 tional reading. On the shelves of the library there 
 are many volumes of stimulating biography and 
 works concerned with the devotional life of the 
 priest, to say nothing of sermons like those of Lid- 
 don or Newman. Ordination addresses like those 
 of Bishop Wilberforce can be profitably read again 
 and again. Contemporary book lists supply the 
 titles of others in abundance. Any oflScer of the 
 school will, I am sure, readily advise as to helpful 
 reading, and the books placed in your hands at the 
 beginning of your course will, I trust, be found 
 bracing and suggestive. 
 
RIGHT USE OF RETIREMENT 71 
 
 2. Prayer and intercession, widening and deep- 
 ening as life widens and deepens, must constitute in 
 our hours of retirement, as it did with the Master, 
 a large part of the occupation. Where, if not here, 
 are you ever to learn to have a life of prayer, and 
 where can you ever hope for a blessing upon your 
 ministry without it ? 
 
 3. Preparation for the Holy Communion must 
 periodically have its distinct place in this self-en- 
 forced retirement. No early celebration should be 
 neglected by the one aiming at the highest standard 
 of spiritual life, and to have some set time every 
 week to inventory the life and appreciate its short- 
 comings, and evoke its best aspirations and assimi- 
 late its rich sacramental nourishment, this is to taste 
 some of the deepest peace of habitual retirement 
 and to find the meaning of Non passihus^ sedpreci- 
 husy itur ad Deum, or, to take the English render- 
 ing in Bishop Andrewes' " Preces Privatae," " It is 
 not by paces, but by prayers that God is come at." 
 
 Let me then bid you begin your new term with 
 some well chosen schedule for the retirement which 
 has so much to do with all piety, and with making 
 you men really consecrated to your high calling ; 
 and which has been so largely instrumental in shap- 
 ing the best priestly holiness in the Catholic Church. 
 
X 
 
 GOOD BODILY TEIM 
 
 St. Paul, in instructing Timothy, puts particular 
 stress upon the characteristics of a man of God as 
 one who is to be " complete, furnished completely 
 unto every good work." And there is in the 
 world translated "complete" a distinct sug- 
 gestion of complete fitness for the work. It 
 covers much the same ground as the "apt and 
 meet" of the challenge in the Ordination Office. 
 Following, then, the general theme, "The Man 
 of God," let us continue it, to see one im- 
 portant mark of a man of God. He is to be well 
 rounded, symmetrical, developing healthfully on 
 all lines, not a one-sided man in any way. And 
 so let us not miss the decided bearing this has 
 upon bodily hygiene itself. That alone will be 
 enough to attempt to speak of at this time, leav- 
 ing other lines of the well-balanced worker for 
 future treatment. 
 
 We must not make the mistake, either, of sup- 
 posing that robust health is the most important 
 thing for the clergyman, or that poor health is a 
 
 72 
 
GOOD BODILY TRIM 73 
 
 sure doom of success in the ministry. From 
 St. Paul with his "thorn in the flesh" and St. 
 Timothy with his " often infirmities," down through 
 the centuries, there are many instances where the 
 very chastening and limitations of sickness and 
 ability to do only so much physically have been 
 turned to the greatest blessedness in the Master's 
 service. And of more than one have I known who 
 had felt that feeble health in the earlier years of 
 their ministry had numbered their days, and at 
 times scarcely dared to plan a year ahead, who, 
 nevertheless, found their ministries prolonged to 
 even the fourscore years of their lives. So that 
 good physical vigor and good length of days in the 
 ministry are by no means always found together, 
 nor can any one reason from ill health in itself to 
 ill result for his career. We have but to recall the 
 cases of a Darwin or a Spencer in scientific activities, 
 or of Green, the historian, to see the testimony to 
 this from other fields. And physical chastening 
 and pain have enriched the devotional literature of 
 the ages. 
 
 The real concern must be to make the most of 
 what we have ; if indifferent health, to husband it 
 and learn how to use it to the best advantage ; if 
 of the ruddy and robust kind, to see to it that we 
 do not neglect it nor impair it. A man may have 
 
74 APT AND MEET 
 
 comparatively few days when he can really say he 
 feels well, and yet, by economizing his strength and 
 time, may be spared to accomplish much. Another 
 may have the vitality and strength of an ox and 
 practically throw it all away. The battle is not to 
 the strong alone. 
 
 Now, how are the candidates for Holy Orders 
 to make this critical dealing with the body a matter 
 of wholesome intelligence and habit? Of course, 
 as Christians we have the aim to keep " the body 
 under," that our flesh being subdued to the Spirit 
 we may ever obey the " godly motions " ; we have 
 the ideal of purity, that the body is the temple of 
 the Holy Spirit ; we have the ideal of destiny, that 
 the body is to be changed and made like unto His 
 own glorious body ; and we have the Church's pre- 
 scription of fasting and discipline as a spiritual 
 exercise. All of these things our Divinity School 
 life should read most deeply into our hearts and 
 conduct if we are at all to teach the truth of them 
 to others. " I beseech you therefore, brethren, by 
 the mercies of God," says St. Paul, " to present 
 your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to 
 God, which is your spiritual service." 
 
 Divinity students are not exempt from the char- 
 acteristics of other young men, and like them they 
 are sometimes inclined to try wild experiments with 
 
GOOD BODILY TRIM 75 
 
 f oodj exercise, and medicine. Scares about dyspepsia 
 and a hundred other ailments are followed by alter- 
 nations of starving and stuflBlng, of violent muscular 
 exertion in some new calisthenic, and then of lassi- 
 tude ; of dosing and then discarding all prescrip- 
 tion ; of reckless defiance of the rules of health, and 
 then of bunching them all into " twenty minutes." 
 Or, perhaps, crude ascetic ideals appeal to one, and 
 he is likely to fall into a pseudo-asceticism, and try 
 to get himself as much out of condition as possible. 
 Eeal asceticism has, no doubt, its place, but amateur 
 asceticism of this sort is apt to lead nowhere, and 
 to be of short duration, and while it lasts not al- 
 together convincing as an ideal to sweetness of dis- 
 position to one's companions. We read of mediaBval 
 monks who could bear the chill of the fireless dormi- 
 tory and wind-swept cloister the better because the 
 grimy and unwashed cuticle kept out the cold better 
 than the softer and cleaner conditions of these latter 
 days. But we find in contrast with that, counsels 
 more timely for our century in such a writer as the 
 Eoman Catholic rector of a New York parish, the 
 Eev. Dr. Wm. Talbot Smith, who, in his book " On 
 the Training of the Priest," pleads for another ideal 
 in the American Roman seminaries, as follows: 
 "At present too large a number of the young 
 priests enter upon parish work emaciated, weak, 
 
76 APT AND MEET 
 
 bloodless, spend years in recovering from injuries 
 inflicted by seminary training, grow fat and shape- 
 less in body before their youth is passed, and often 
 grow mentally morbid and drop into the grave be- 
 tween fifty and sixty, after a physically irregular 
 and uncomfortable life." He urges a training in 
 the Roman seminaries which will secure "a fine 
 vitality, sound health, a graceful body and a grace- 
 ful carriage, when the constitution is good at the 
 beginning " ; in the case of the feeble or deficient, 
 a training which may " add to the vigor and years 
 and usefulness of the student." And he contrasts 
 the meal hour, which ought to be the "grand 
 social hour of the day," with " the mental irrita- 
 tion of the student as he sits before his awful mess, 
 and listens in dumb pain to the reader in the pulpit 
 describing the mortification of the saints." (Pp. 
 74, 80, 81.) 
 
 Seminary life does call for decided discipline of 
 the body in a sensible health regime. One can put 
 all the resolution of an ascetic, or the determination 
 to conquer a liver, or a digestion, into fixing the 
 cold bath habit in the morning. Of course, there 
 must be care, and, in infirm health, medical counsel- 
 ing about that ; — and indeed a good physician friend 
 will be found timely in the whole matter of a sane 
 regime — but any Divinity School which can send the 
 
GOOD BODILY TRIM 77 
 
 greater part of its men to their daily work with the 
 circulation and glow and cleanliness of the plunge, 
 or the shower, or the sponge, is, I believe, contribu- 
 ting one of the most important points of all to the 
 good physical trim for that future field, and so, to 
 those sane and not anaemic outlooks upon life and 
 upon duty the world so much needs. There may 
 be more real virtue in a good morning tub than in 
 i a sleepy OflBice recital. But after the tub the Office 
 will not be sleepy. And the clergyman's life will 
 ever bear the marks of such a habit, as it dispels 
 " mulligrubs," and finds elasticity of sinew and of 
 spirit. The red glow from the morning splash will 
 drive off many a blue Monday. 
 
 Then, of course, good food and good, regular, 
 suitable exercise must have their due attention. 
 No one can afford to play fast and loose with meal- 
 times, or with routine sleep and recreation, any 
 more than he can with his Jiours of faithful work. 
 Owlish hours for study sometimes seem like over- 
 work, when they mark only underthrift of time. 
 Tired feeling all the while may only come from 
 nonsensical nerve-wear, or inhabitual habits. The 
 penalty is sure to follow, sooner or later. Indi- 
 gestion, irritability, morbid views of things, depres- 
 sion and all that class of clerical crankiness, how 
 they weaken a man's usefulness and belittle him in 
 
78 APT AND MEET 
 
 the eyes of his people ! And how often they could 
 be avoided or minimized if in the Divinity School 
 there were more of a conscience to fix right habits 
 of care as to these matters of food and rest and 
 recreation. Every Divinity School dining-room 
 ought to be a kind of silent lecture-room in itself. 
 Walks and tennis-courts and gymnasiums have a 
 place most congenial for conscience. 
 
 It will come to pass, if these considerations pre- 
 vail with us, that we shall be learning what the 
 man of God should not be with reference to his 
 body in the very best manner possible ; that is, by 
 trying to practice what he should be. There is no 
 better way to conquer sloth and gluttony and other 
 sins, down to the grosser temptations. The ex- 
 hilaration of the morning bath will drive away 
 laziness and late rising and slipshod personal habits 
 of dress or daily task, and many another shortcom- 
 ing that subtracts so much from the count of the 
 man in the " day's work " of the after life. 
 Kegularity and prudence in the other matters I have 
 referred to will tend to prolong the days and 
 economize the strength and develop the worth of 
 the whole ministry — which at best will be far too 
 short for its uplifting vision. And, like Wilfrid of 
 old, it may be ours to find something of the 
 athletic body and unclouded cheerfulness and 
 
GOOD BODILY TRIM 79 
 
 blessed mind that are so closely and mysteriously- 
 akin because they have so much to do with the 
 making of an all-around manhood and an all-around 
 ministry. 
 
XI 
 
 DAEK SPEECH UPON THE HAEP 
 
 By no means the least knowledge to be attained 
 in a wholesome Divinity School course is the 
 knowledge of self. And the benefit each one gets 
 from this part of the course depends a good deal on 
 his own initiative and care. It is one of the easiest 
 parts to slur. It is perhaps one of the most diflSi- 
 cult parts to master. One may round out all the 
 routine studies with a brilliant examination and still 
 be a comparative ignoramus about himself. An- 
 other may be all along taxed with self-struggle 
 to his soul's health without being at all disturbed 
 about his books and lectures. The latter perhaps is 
 the more ordinary experience as it is the more blessed 
 way. 
 
 Now the " dark speech " of the Psalmist in the 
 Forty-ninth Psalm is an apt phrase for voicings in 
 our being that we have to learn to interpret to our- 
 selves. We know better that they exist than what 
 they say. Their darkness partakes of mystery. 
 They come up out of our subconsciousness. There 
 are clear sounds in the sensitive whispering gallery 
 
 80 
 
DARK SPEECH UPON THE HARP 81 
 
 of the soul, but the language needs translation. 
 They indicate tongues, but we are in the room of 
 the unlearned. God's word in the original Hebrew 
 of the Old Testament or in the subtle Greek of the 
 I New does not more invitingly call for intelligent 
 translation than these unknown tongues of our 
 deepened life and character. The most jarring dis- 
 cords of life come when these dark speeches are 
 unheeded, or misdirected or harshened. The pro- 
 foundest harmonies of life are found when they are 
 set to their proper music, and so the Psalmist 
 touches upon real philosophy of the higher life 
 when he is inspired to put it in just the way he 
 does, "I will show my dark speech upon the 
 harp." The beat, the rhythm, and the play of ex- 
 pression and the spirit-stirring effect of the harp 
 felicitously suggest the thought of that one who, in 
 the phrase of " In Memoriam," " beat his music 
 out." And we recall here that quoted from 
 Joubert in a letter of the late Sir George Grove — 
 " the lyre is a winged instrument and must trans- 
 port." 
 
 There is no more timely application of the prayer 
 " Lighten our darkness " in these Divinity School 
 years than to this darkness of speech that comes 
 out of our innermost searchings. And nothing will 
 leave sweeter memories of these years if God 
 
82 APT ANB MEET 
 
 makes this darkness to be light. Take the very 
 yoice of the vocation itself. You have already 
 thought you heard that speaking to you. That is 
 the reason you are here. You have had it speaking 
 to you in a trust you are to affirm in the solemn 
 hour of your ordination that you are inwardly 
 moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon the holy 
 oflSce and ministration of a deacon to serve God for 
 the promoting of His glory, and the edifying of His 
 people. That blessed light has been thrown full 
 into your heart recesses. You have felt both its 
 warmth and its illumination of a life purpose. 
 
 But count it not as though some strange thing 
 had happened unto you if the speech about vocation 
 sometimes seems dark — dark in the sense that there 
 come misgivings, that it grows faint, that it is hard 
 to distinguish in a din of other voices, that it does 
 not seem to speak so directly from the heart, that 
 its accents somehow do not seem as pleasing as we 
 thought. The thickest darkness of human life 
 sometimes broods over questionings about mistakes 
 of a lifetime. It is not to be wondered at if amid 
 all the self-scrutinies which ply the sober-minded 
 candidate for Holy Orders the main question is now 
 .and then brought under review. So long as one is 
 careful not to allow such introspection to become 
 morbid, the mere fact that these self-communings 
 
DAEK SPEECH UPON THE HARP 83 
 
 come need not in itself disturb him. They are by 
 no means uncommon to earnest men. They come 
 and go. They, in t)ne form or another, enter into 
 the experience of the Candidate and the Veteran. 
 Under the spell of a great sorrow the late Presiding 
 Bishop, Dr. Clark, is said to have felt a sinking of 
 heart about the ministry after he had served in it 
 nearly fifty years, though he soon recovered and 
 realized, as had those who knew him best, its great 
 blessing and strength. So that almost on the eve 
 of his departure he could write : 
 
 "I see the far-off shadowy realm 
 And thither turn the trembling helm. 
 
 " The distant gleams of silver light 
 Believe the darkness of the night." 
 
 One other kind of " dark speech " is apt to puzzle 
 the ingenuous candidate and give him thoughtful, 
 not to say anxious, hours. It is the spectre-like 
 speech of doubt. It is a species of tempting in the 
 sense of testing. Temptation of all kinds, especially 
 of the grosser kind, is traceable down into the dread 
 mystery of evil, and out of that come many whis- 
 perings of which we say we do not know what to 
 .make of them. But what I have now particularly 
 in mind as we open the year's curriculum anew are 
 
84 APT AND MEET 
 
 those insinuating challenges which seem to meet us 
 in the dark as our mind enters into truths about 
 which our text-books, and lectures, and general Di- 
 vinity School atmosphere treat. It is not that we 
 do not want to avoid these challenges. Indeed 
 , they are positively unwelcome. We are sure of 
 that. But such voices will speak and confront us 
 with dark, unintelligible, haunting speech. And 
 sometimes it all makes us uneasy. 
 
 Now what bearing upon this has that instinct of 
 the Psalmist, " I will show my dark speech upon the 
 harp " ? It seems to me to mean that he will play 
 out as a kind of harp speech, what he cannot express 
 in words. The harp will interpret where language 
 fails. Explanation, analysis, definition, word-mak- 
 ing will not dispell the darkness. Turning the 
 speech into the harmonies of the skilled player's 
 touch will. In other words, the Divinity student 
 with his dark speech, of whatever sort it may be, as 
 it comes to him in the retirement and world of the 
 inner man, can, I believe, best find the music for it 
 which will bring him peace and an ever-deepening 
 sense of its meaning by making the routine of study, 
 together with a well-filled rule of spiritual life, the 
 stringed instrument to which he gives his best pow- 
 ers and his application as week follows week in the 
 ongoing of the School life. It is perhaps another 
 
DARK SPEECH UPON THE HARP 85 
 
 way of applying the old maxim, " solvitur ambu- 
 lando,"— or better still, the Master's precept to 
 St. Thomas, when in reply to his dark speech, the 
 utterance from out of the honest bewilderment of 
 his soul, " Lord, we know not whither Thou goest, 
 and how can we know the way ? " Jesus saith unto 
 him, " I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." The 
 purport of the answer was that in Christ was the 
 unfolding and peace in all the mystery of life. It 
 was a very different thing from trying to clear up 
 in the mind of the saint the thousand pressing and 
 practical difficulties about the " via dolorosa," or the 
 visit to the spirits in prison, or the gates opening 
 for the King of glory to enter in. The Master did 
 not all at once make clear the way to St. Thomas, 
 but, as it were, bade him to rest all such question- 
 ings with Him, with the implied promise that he 
 should find peace for his soul. And so with you, 
 who, as the years here slip by, are so soon to reach 
 the sending to your work for that same Master. 
 Your dark speech, in all the awakening to new 
 vistas of theological truth and the history of the 
 Church of God and the worship of the ages, and to 
 the revelation in the Word of God, will find its true 
 harp harmonies. All human discords become con- 
 cord in Christ. To see further and further into it 
 all, to learn to cast the care as you go along fondly 
 
86 APT AND MEET 
 
 on Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, to 
 use unremittingly private devotion and these chapel 
 services and your regular devotional and missionary 
 meetings, and the scrupulous fidelity to every daily 
 task, to appropriate to yourselves that precious as- 
 surance that He will become to you your personal 
 Way, your Truth, your Life, — this is to make music 
 of Life out of its mystery. The text we chose at 
 the beginning of our Church Divinity School life to 
 express the genius of the training we aim at was 
 this very one — " I am the Way, the Truth and the 
 Life." For the first time in the history of the 
 school one has been summoned to his rest before 
 completing his course as a student here. [One of 
 the students had died in the vacation.] Much that 
 is still dark to us is now part of the new song to 
 him. And after all, that fuller and ceaseless swell 
 of harmony, the harpers harping with their harps 
 as the seer's vision of our redemption from all the 
 darkness — for there is no night there — is to be one 
 day the perfect utterance of the soul. 
 
XII 
 CAMABADEEIB 
 
 Divinity School intimacies, like those of other 
 places, take care of themselves. Natural lines of 
 congeniality, previous associations, class and lecture 
 groupings, common views and sometimes common 
 trials here as elsewhere in the world bind men to- 
 gether in some of the most happy and lasting ties of 
 life. Damon finds Pythias. David finds Jonathan 
 and all through the after ministry correspondence 
 or reunion are those of " hearts of each other sure " 
 and ever relieve tedium and wear of the day's work. 
 It is well that this is so, and it is the best kind of 
 character endowment for an alumni association. 
 The man who finds no especial friends for himself 
 in life makes a big mistake and somewhere in his 
 make-up there is a big defect. 
 
 But while that generally comes of itself we must 
 not overlook the need of something else which 
 comes more by our own initiative and the cultiva- 
 tion, patient and persistent by the grace of God, of 
 an acquired trait of character. When the sons of 
 the prophets proposed to Elisha enlargement for 
 their straitened habitation they volunteered them- 
 
 87 
 
88 APT AND MEET 
 
 selves the suggestion : ^ " Let us go, we pray thee, 
 unto Jordan, and take thence every man a beam, 
 and let us make a place there, where we may dwell." 
 The sense of each one's helping his little to the new 
 home was notably felt and expressed. Every one 
 wished to have a hand in putting his beam into the 
 building. That was their own idea of the way it 
 should go up. Beam for it more than room in it, 
 duty to it more than privilege from it dictated the 
 thought. That spirit must have made a happy 
 family in it. The question was. What can I do for 
 it ? And that wonderfully helped that other ques- 
 tion. What can it do for me ? 
 
 It is a satisfaction which I see no reason for 
 hesitating to avow that our conditions here are 
 favorable for the distinct growth of such a spirit. 
 Indeed there is much about the honest-hearted 
 young man of to-day to make him respect and wish 
 to lend a hand to whatever contributes to the 
 morale and efficiency of anything to which, as we 
 say, he belongs. He feels bound not only to stand 
 up for, but by some downright service to sustain its 
 repute. His heam he fits in somewhere when it 
 will tell as strongly and structurally as he can 
 make it. This of course applies to his scholarship, 
 his athletic record when that is involved in any 
 
 1 2 Kings 6:2. 
 
CAMARADERIE 89 
 
 academic career, and his outspoken allegiance. 
 ISTot oblivious to limitations or shortcomings in his 
 body corporate he does his best to be a helpful 
 rather than a mere critical or peevish factor in 
 meeting them. 
 
 Now there is one feature of a Divinity School life 
 which somehow needs especial stress laid upon it in 
 this connection. That is the sense of true comrade- 
 ship in the ministry for which the life of the 
 seminary can do so much if the opportunity is only 
 duly understood and improved. Over and above 
 those spontaneous friendships already referred to 
 this opportunity exists. The purport of it is that 
 besides the affinities natural between men there 
 must be a conscience and a habit of every one to 
 create an atmosphere of fellowship in the Gospel, 
 yes, of Yoke-fellowship, as we are placed side by 
 side under the taking of Christ's yoke upon us. 
 Common intellectual zest makes real hospitality of 
 one man's thought towards another, even though 
 convictions and processes of mind may be diamet- 
 rically opposed. At the time of the beginnings and 
 development of the Oxford movement when the 
 common room of Oriel College had that galaxy of 
 bright minds, each contributed to, as each gained 
 from, the discussions. And they might be as diflfer- 
 ently constituted and range as far apart in after life 
 
90 APT AND MEET 
 
 as did Thomas Arnold and John Keble and yet the 
 community of interests of the old Oriel life sur- 
 vived, as it probably ever softened their divergencies. 
 And so the common life and common table converse 
 of those associated in the preparation for the min- 
 istry may be made to have a most salutary effect 
 upon the whole attitude of mind towards others as 
 men mingle together in all the things that try their 
 souls in after relations of the ministry. For one 
 must not disguise from himself the temptations that 
 are so thick and subtile as brother rubs against 
 brother in that after life of activity. Odium 
 theologicum has passed into a proverb as a special 
 brand of rancor. Even the Apostles were led into 
 wranglings of precedence. The thing that gave 
 Diotrephes Scriptural fame was his " loving to have 
 the preeminence." And so all along there is that 
 weakness of human nature showing itself in caus- 
 ing divisions through pride or intolerance, or ambi- 
 tion or envyings. And no exegete need dwell long 
 on that text — in the light of history arid of the 
 human heart — " Where envying and strife are there 
 are confusion and every evil work." You can hardly 
 hope to escape your share of such things, contact 
 with the littlenesses, and rivalries, and jealousies, 
 and bitternesses and bickerings and malice that good 
 men are exposed to from without and from within, 
 
CAMARADERIE 91 
 
 and the havoc such things cause in character and in 
 the Church. Sad priestly blemishes they are break- 
 ing up what might be the solid frontage of the 
 phalanx of brethren, the sneer of the Cynic, the won- 
 der of the faithful, the spectacle of all men even as 
 Pilate knew that for envy they had delivered Christ. 
 To be forewarned of this should be to become fore- 
 armed here and now. And the surest way to 
 guard against such sources of alienation and dispute 
 among brethren is to early cultivate the spirit of 
 comradeship. It is not to be mistaken for an 
 attempt to force companionship, when that does not 
 come of itself. That would be artificial and un- 
 wholesome. 
 
 No, to cultivate a spirit of comradeship and to 
 feel a sensitiveness for the right atmosphere of 
 Camaraderie in a Divinity School there must be, 
 first, the honest willingness to go out of our way to 
 accomplish it and not to look upon it as something 
 which " just happens " or is a negligible quantity. 
 It is a concern of undoubted spiritual import to be 
 effected by spiritual agencies. And to get oneself 
 well in hand in the matter of putting up with oth- 
 er's faults or peculiarities and of getting rid of any 
 assets of like sort which we may ourselves happen 
 to possess to the discomfort of others is a timely 
 ambition which the very spirit of camaraderie may 
 
92 APT AND MEET 
 
 help. It will much enhance the value of the per- 
 sonal equation out in the ministry, if the minglings 
 of one with another as circumstances shake differ- 
 ent tastes and temperaments and opinions all in to- 
 gether in close Seminary contacts, have the effect 
 of the revolving drum in the screw factory which 
 polishes the loosely enclosed screws by trituration. 
 Far better will it be than to have men isolate and 
 rust themselves in cliques only of the like-minded, 
 or try to avoid altogether those that differ from 
 them. This is the very bane of party and of bigotry. 
 It is then of the first importance that we set a de- 
 cided value upon this attitude of brotherliness with 
 a determination to make it worth our while to 
 understand it and to act upon it as an invaluable 
 qualification for a peace-making ministry — to dread 
 the lack of it as we would the role of an ignoramus. 
 And we remember that as saintly a man as Bishop 
 Andrewes had to pray " to think kindly of others." 
 A first essential of any genuine comradeship any- 
 where is consideration for others. And where is 
 that needed more than in the Ministry to-day ? In 
 things pertaining to God now as of old he who is 
 appointed to service must be one " who can bear 
 gently with the ignorant and erring, for that he 
 himself also is compassed with infirmity." A leader 
 of English thought in the last century explains how 
 
CAMAEADERIE 93 
 
 much his whole life had been influenced by inter- 
 course with men of his own age at Cambridge Uni- 
 versity, often men whose tastes were most unlike 
 his own, and strikingly testifies to the effect upon 
 him of the consideration of one of his fellows. He 
 says, "I was a noisy and often angry disputant 
 though mixing much shyness with my presumption. 
 
 In most parties I was reckoned a bore. But 
 
 who fancied all fine things of me because I had 
 exactly the qualities he wanted and was deficient 
 in those he had," even when his opinion "was 
 shaken when he suggested that I had passed into a 
 fanatical theologian and when I was hard and cold 
 to him, he still showed me the rarest friendship." 
 How many, many reminiscences there are of a con- 
 trary sort! How many, many opportunities lost 
 thoughtlessly or selfishly of helping a fellow to ex- 
 periences of so thankful and happy a retrospect of 
 Divinity School days! Indeed many a time the 
 kindly advances and interest which come from the 
 recognition of the duty of comradeship kindle into 
 that flame in which the old proverb becomes true 
 of character, " A crooked stick makes a straight 
 fire." 
 
 And to consideration must be added candor. Or 
 perhaps it were better put, this consideration for 
 others is consistent with candor, for in the close 
 
94 APT AND MEET 
 
 contacts, candor there is apt to be at any rate. 
 The genuine self is pretty thoroughly revealed, so 
 unmistakably that it is often noted that what a 
 man is to his immediate contemporaries in the Uni- 
 versity or Seminary that he is to them in all the 
 after years. The impression becomes &xed and is 
 seldom materially revised. As almost a necessary 
 consequence of this mutual reading of character, 
 peculiarities and crudities and faults and weak- 
 nesses come into a somewhat strong light and there 
 follows the running chaff and comment and correc- 
 tion which have such wholesome effect in a dis- 
 cipline all of their own when good-naturedly given 
 and taken. 
 
 Then besides mutual forbearance and this rubbing 
 away of rough edges another very contributory 
 factor in camaraderie is self-schooling in open- 
 mindedness and fairness and good temper in dis- 
 cussion and controversy. When we feel strongly 
 and when we mingle solely with those who are like- 
 minded with ourselves, opposition we are sure to 
 meet is apt to cause heat and rashness of statement 
 which injure both the cause and the comradeship. 
 A training like that for the bar where one must 
 hold himself well in hand as a matter of business 
 would have its decided advantage for any clergy- 
 man. It would teach him to keep to the facts and 
 
CAMARADERIE 95 
 
 the logic without interjecting personal pique or 
 bias. But there must be a deeper principle of self- 
 restraint than a mere professional one. There must 
 be the cultivation of a habit of " sweet reasonable- 
 ness." I have sometimes thought that one who sits 
 at the window of a Kailroad Bureau of Information 
 in a large city and answers all sorts of questions, 
 oftentimes obliged to "suffer fools gladly," and 
 pacifies all sorts of irate and unreasonable travel- 
 ers could give us of the clergy valuable points of 
 serenity and practical philosophy in our preparation 
 for dealing with people generally. It would cut 
 out not a little irritability and narrowness and 
 other things that count so seriously against getting 
 along with the all sorts of folk that go to make up 
 a world and a congregation. It would save many a 
 one from wrecking his real usefulness in the minor 
 and less important matters of the ministry. It 
 would end many a muddle with a smile instead of a 
 sore spot. The little world of the Divinity School 
 throws together strong individualities. The open- 
 ing up of the new fields of thought and investiga- 
 tion in the various departments stimulates discus- 
 sion and discussion makes alignments of views, — 
 and ready-made views de omnibus rebus and espe- 
 cially upon some of the most difficult topics of 
 church scholarship are apt to lose nothing in posi- 
 
96 APT AND MEET 
 
 tiveness from their freshness. The result is that 
 often there is just the opportunity under such oppo- 
 sitions to find a gymnasium for the exercise and 
 development of the finer sense of fairness and will- 
 ingness to hear the other side, and of a white light 
 of fact and argument, not colored with pride or 
 prejudice. And such a principle deepened into 
 habit will be one of the most valuable possessions 
 you can carry into the comminglings and contro- 
 versies and patient leading out of error, of the work 
 to come. And it should be somewhere in the con- 
 stant earnest prayer of all that they may learn that 
 life lesson charged upon Timothy by St. Paul " to 
 be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in 
 meekness instructing those that oppose themselves." 
 Comradeship here is after all then only one phase 
 of that earthly fellowship in Christ and in His Min- 
 istry which is part of the communion one with an- 
 other in His Holy Catholic Church. It is far more 
 than temperament drawn to temperament and man 
 to man in mere accidental association under this 
 roof. It is no less than that fellowship in which 
 James, Cephas and John gave their right hands to 
 Paul and Barnabas, no less than that fellowship of 
 which St. John wrote, " If we walk in the light as 
 He is in the light we have fellowship one with an- 
 other and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth 
 
CAMAEADERIE 97 
 
 US from all sin." There is much that we can do to 
 foster it and to promote a happy atmosphere of 
 this camaraderie. There is much we can be on our 
 guard against in order to 
 
 ^' Keep far our foes, give peace at home.'' 
 
 We have much to be thankful for, it should be 
 said for a measure of its realization here already. 
 But its deepest blessings and its true enjoyment 
 must come from that Holy Spirit which maketh 
 men to be of one mind in an house. The Holy 
 Spirit will help each one do his part towards the 
 sacred comradeship so that it will in spirit become 
 a true Community. It may mean wrestlings with 
 self, tendencies for us to overcome, brotherliness 
 to be brought out through the quiet transforming 
 process of the Holy Spirit. Keeping too much to 
 oneself may withhold the dues of one towards 
 comradeship as too much self-assertion of another 
 may jar it. Indifference to it may have to be 
 roused. False perspective about its importance 
 may need rectification. But all these and other hin- 
 drances to it are matters of that direct character 
 training for which these are most hopeful, most 
 profitable years. The very balance and rounding 
 that some characters need and that other characters 
 can give is the due value and use of comradeship. 
 
98 APT AND MEET 
 
 The Church and the world need social Christianity 
 fully as much as they need Christian Socialism. 
 And by the grace of God, the atmosphere of that 
 you can make more and more the atmosphere of 
 your preparatory period in Divinity School days. 
 
XIII 
 VOCATION AND VACATION 
 
 The play upon words — " Vocation and Vaca- 
 tion " — is a very ancient one, dignified by patristic 
 use. And the associated thoughts are as old as hu- 
 manity, and as elementary as the moral command- 
 ments to labor the six days and rest the seventh. 
 Even the proportion of rest to work seems to have 
 been fixed in our physical nature as well as that of 
 animals as was shown under the breakdown of 
 both in the attempt of the French Kevolution to 
 substitute every tenth for every seventh day. And 
 we may be sure the vision of an anaemic, dyspeptic, 
 bilious-tinged, overworked clergyman appeals to no 
 Candidate for Holy Orders. 
 
 But unless there is some intelligent and resolute 
 principle of coordinating vocation with vacation on 
 wholesome, not to say conscientious lines, there is 
 apt to be trouble ahead, and a good deal of it and a 
 very harassing drag of it for that future ministry. 
 One common foretaste of this is in the time spent in 
 health experiments in those years of young man- 
 hood when indigestion and other ills, imaginary or 
 
 99 
 
100 APT AND MEET 
 
 not, bring one to that unwelcome sense that he 
 must — perhaps in boyhood or youth he has ridi- 
 culed the idea — learn to take care of himself. If at 
 that early stage of affairs some sensible rule of rest 
 is found and adhered to, it will save and be far 
 more effective than spasmodic resort to all kinds of 
 heroic exercise or sure-cure quackeries. And the 
 failure to know how to rest has not a little to do 
 oftentimes with the failure to know how to work. 
 It may land a man in either one or two misfit 
 classes in the ministry. Without due recreation he 
 may become a drudge or a nervous fidget. "With- 
 out putting real strokes of work when we do work 
 and so consecrating regular time to that, nothing is 
 easier than to fall into the dawdling habit, " mak- 
 ing vacation our vocation " as I have heard an old 
 Father quoted, and so turning out the ignoble speci- 
 men of a lazy clergyman. If 
 
 '^ All work and no play 
 Makes Jack a dull boy,'' 
 
 we may add : 
 
 All play and no work 
 Makes Jack a sad shirk. 
 
 Our routine of the Seminary life reflecting of 
 course in this respect the life of the age, provides 
 the daily, the weekly and the annual periods of in- 
 
VOCATION AND VACATION 101 
 
 terval between working courses and hours. These 
 intervals include the night's rest in sleep, the week's 
 rest on one of the seven days, and the holiday 
 times between terms. So far as the reporting for 
 prescribed duty is concerned, each of these is a 
 vacuum and constitutes a real if not a technical 
 vacation. 
 
 It will, I believe, in no way question the natural 
 and spontaneous falling into line with this self-evi- 
 dent scheme which is the happy experience of so 
 many who do it as a matter of course and get the 
 benefit of it without much thought about it, and it 
 will hardly be misconstrued as a counsel to any- 
 thing artificial or eccentric, if we stop to reflect a 
 little upon a right use of these various phases of 
 vacation. 
 
 And first no man can afford to be a virtual spend- 
 thrift of his night's rest. Whether there is the 
 temptation of the student to encroach upon it with 
 his books, or of the idler to cut into it with the late 
 sessions of circles of companionship, nature in the 
 long run will have her revenges in one shape or 
 another of impaired health or vigor. And overwork 
 that puts a man below his physical par in the Divinity 
 School is but a premonition of the always tired 
 feeling which makes him so uncomfortably conscious 
 of falling below his mark week in and week out of 
 
102 Ca. .?Z APT AND MEET 
 
 his active work. Somewhere about the eight hours' 
 sleep is the quota of the average young man and he 
 who makes up his mind to guard that as eflfectually 
 as he can, will not be apt to be wakeful when he 
 wishes to be sleepy or sleepy when he needs and 
 ought to be wide awake. 
 
 Furthermore, to keep a true Sabbath of rest 
 every week, however inviting or sensible it may 
 seem, is by no means the automatic arrangement it 
 might appear to be for a busy man. If it were 
 practicable to so order the Divinity School life that 
 the Sundays could be left free from outside duties 
 and be reserved for personal cultivation of a spirit 
 of worship " in the beauty of holiness " without the 
 care or distractions of responsibility for conducting 
 Services; if some part of the Sunday could be 
 given up to the refreshing walk or nap, and another 
 part to reading some uplifting biography or other 
 devotional literature followed by fervent pouring 
 out the soul by oneself in prayer; if the whole 
 day could be so made really different from other 
 days, who could calculate the spiritual, not to say 
 the mental and physical vigor and strength with 
 which each week the consecration to the work 
 would be reinforced ? And then the habit thus 
 formed will persist so far as practicable in the after 
 ministry, not letting a man feel easy unless he can 
 
VOCATION AND VACATION 103 
 
 somehow secure in his weekly round some period of 
 relaxation and new vision. 
 
 Circumstances in many cases do not permit here 
 the fuller realization of that ideal. Lay-reading and 
 other duties, for reasons into which I need not enter, 
 preempt the Sunday and preoccupy the hours that 
 might become so precious with spiritual values. But 
 here the very limitations have their suggestiveness. 
 That life after Ordination will be likely to be one 
 crowding the Sunday with Services and other 
 public calls upon time. And in his own spiritual 
 and physical interest the wise clergyman must 
 somehow resolutely manage to have some time 
 every week he can call his own for his Sabbath. If 
 it is his happy lot to have some part of Sunday — 
 say the afternoon — free, so much the better. If not 
 let it be some other day, Saturday or Monday, and 
 if not a full day, a half-day. The methodical man 
 can generally make for himself some running rule, 
 however many may be, of course, the exceptions. 
 And the one who realizes what is best for him and 
 for his usefulness will see to it that the time so pre- 
 scribed has both its proportion of healthy exercise 
 and recreation and its as vital proportion of de- 
 votional rekindling. Above all things when cares 
 and sorrows and burdens press home he will need 
 betimes to be able so to say from such hours : " In 
 
104 APT AND MEET 
 
 the multitude of the sorrows that I had in my 
 heart Thy comforts have refreshed my soul." Be- 
 gin here and now in these shaping years to provide 
 somewhere in the week — and the routine of the 
 School, in recognition of the Sunday calls upon your 
 time, makes Monday a free day — for intelligent and 
 settled Sabbath invigoration of body and spirit. 
 Put method into it. Fix the habit now and it may 
 give tone to your whole ministry. 
 
 If we try to rise to a high-minded sense of the 
 place of vacation in our vocation, it will save us 
 from delusions about what we call the vacations of 
 the School year. The very last thing to think of 
 them is that they are times for mere idling. In 
 point of fact no one here I presume so regards 
 them. Every man, for example, realizes that 
 the long summer holiday is meant to afford 
 him opportunity for the side reading in the various 
 lines of study that in the sequence of Lectures and 
 Eecitations in term time he may not be able to ac- 
 complish. It is the time to school himself in 
 initiative as a student and to feel the zest for learn- 
 ing on his own account. In the short period given 
 a Divinity School to cover so much, the Lectures 
 can oftentimes only point the way and call out the 
 literary "Wanderlust of the true learner. The 
 vacation gives the opportunity for book and 
 
VOCATION AND VACATION 105 
 
 scholar sightseeing in a thousand edifying and 
 absorbing ways over the course. Oftentimes it 
 develops special tastes and acquirements and one 
 discovers to himself the expert in some Department. 
 Then, as in the case of Phillips Brooks, who is a 
 signal instance of one showing initiative of research 
 in his preparatory work : 
 
 *^ The cold grasp of duty embraces delight 
 Like the rough rocky bay where the waters lie bright." 
 
 And it is much to learn how to use a vacation to 
 true bodily and mental and spiritual comfort in 
 other ways. Even under conditions which prohibit 
 the larger expenditures for travel or atmosphering 
 oneself in scenes and surroundings that appeal to 
 a love of nature or of art or of Old World tradi- 
 tions that may be the privilege of later years, much 
 may be accomplished by discriminating plans and 
 purposes in a holiday season. The choice of the 
 place and kind of outing to fit one's own prefer- 
 ences instead of merely following the crowd ; the 
 careful provision for time for communing with self 
 and with God and " being still " whatever the 
 memoranda for communing with nature and being 
 healthfully active ; the freeing of self from fag that 
 there may be elasticity and receptiveness for in- 
 spiration and aspiration ; all these send a man back 
 
106 APT AND MEET 
 
 to his day's work with a resiliency and vigor of at- 
 tack which suffuse the whole with a new joy and 
 new fervency. "The right use of leisure," said 
 Bishop Westcott, " is an object of education, not 
 second — the Judgment of Aristotle — even to the 
 right fulfilment of work." 
 
 Forethought then and the simple striking the 
 right value of vacation in vocation in some such ways 
 as I have outlined back of the regular exercise that 
 needs no commendation, can constitute the Semi- 
 nary life a veritable gymnasium for wholesome 
 standards of a health regimen. For the work's 
 sake as well as for physical well-being, one of the 
 best safeguards against an anaemic or a jaundiced 
 or a neurasthenic ministry, or a premature break- 
 down of usefulness lies in the right fixing of habits 
 of the good night's rest, the weekly recreation and 
 the visionful vacation. 
 
XIY 
 
 BOOKS AND BOOKISHIsTESS 
 
 It is curiously though accidentally significant 
 that while the Lambeth Conference of 1897 met in 
 an old " Guard Koom " at Lambeth Palace, the last 
 Conference of 1908 met in an old Library. Betake 
 yourselves to your books, is the purport of one of 
 the strongest messages out of the recent Encyclical 
 Letter of the Conference to clergy and all interested 
 in true standards of Education throughout the 
 Church. The leaders not only sentinel the times as 
 in a Guard Koom, but seize the opportunity to stress 
 the Study and Training function as the Library 
 atmosphere has become again a matter of prime and 
 pressing consequence. One of the earliest Libraries 
 known to history was designated by a heathen 
 leader as a " Dispensary for the Soul," and so no 
 one would claim that it is a new idea, though I be- 
 lieve there are few that would deny that it is a most 
 opportune one for the existing century conditions. 
 The mediaeval habit of bookishness as a habit for 
 erudition had in it many things of present-day 
 value for scope and finish in its application to pres- 
 ent-day subject matter. 
 
 107 
 
108 APT AND MEET 
 
 Let US start with three facts : 1. As Divinity 
 Students you must use and own books. 2. A 
 Seminary must have a general Library and 3. Your 
 own books and the Library as well as recitations 
 and lectures must have due regard for the figure of 
 the " scribe like unto a man that is an householder 
 which bringeth forth out of his treasures things new 
 and old." 
 
 Now the sense of ownership and association by 
 use is one which responds to cultivation. The use 
 of an ordinary text-book, for example, may put the 
 autograph of your property in it in more ways than 
 one. You may mark passages that strike you and 
 put in references and annotations and associate 
 teachings and thoughts with it that will make it 
 like an old friend you like to have by you. An old 
 book on the Articles once came into my possession in 
 which the possessor, presumably in the eighteenth 
 century, had made running marginal expression of 
 his approval or not by simply drawing the line of a 
 profile, forehead, nose and mouth, with the. curve of 
 the mouth upward or downward to denote the smile 
 or sour face as the case might be. And then in 
 any book, memoranda of paragraphs and pages on 
 the blank leaves next the cover, as one studies or 
 reads with the handy lead pencil, constitute a simple 
 ready reference system for whatever meat you have 
 
BOOKS AND BOOKISHNESS 109 
 
 found in the book. These are some of the second- 
 ary helps to becoming a book lover, which is a vast 
 step beyond being a mere user or owner. A book 
 lover has a certain respect for his books — you can 
 sometimes see it in the very way he treats them — 
 and soon discovers in himself a just pride in them 
 and a dawning ambition to build up a library all 
 his own. That again should be recognized and en- 
 couraged. To get one shelfful and then another of 
 good and useful books has a zest laudable and hope- 
 ful. And however small the space or frugal the 
 purchase money available, the sooner one feels it 
 and acts intelligently upon it the better. Such a 
 library builder always builds better than he knows 
 for his after work. And the probability is that in 
 his future rectory with such a habit, and all it means 
 of study and reading and fresh thought in his min- 
 istry, it will always be easier for him to house such 
 a library than it would be while absorbed in other 
 tastes to find sufficient show of books to keep a room 
 called a library in countenance. 
 
 Obviously a matter of first concern is to know 
 how to be a practical library builder. And here 
 some hints may be found helpful. Suppose then 
 you are, while in your Seminary course, laying 
 foundations for a good working library : at first 
 you may not be able to do more than get the 
 
110 APT AND MEET 
 
 necessary text-books as they come in course. Take 
 good care of them. If there be a little spare cash 
 some principle of selection will save mistakes and 
 imprudent purchasing and lumbering up of your 
 shelves with what you can do without or at least 
 defer buying. Every volume you get when you are 
 so limited in expenditure should count for your 
 culture. That of course will include now and then 
 a book of general literature as well as those of your 
 technical course. It will be well to consult the 
 Professors in their several Departments, lists of 
 reference works named in current lectures, of au- 
 thorities named at the end of special articles in 
 Bible and Church Dictionaries, Commentaries and 
 Treatises on special parts of the Bible and the like. 
 Unless there be ample means, expensive sets of 
 Books of Reference can generally for the time be 
 consulted in the School Library. Suggestive lists 
 are given in such books as "The Priest's Prayer 
 Book," Gott's " Parish Priest of the Town," Bibli- 
 ography at the end of Standard Works, in local 
 Public Libraries, etc. In this connection it may be 
 well to call attention to the need of acquiring a 
 habit of using the General Library both in follow- 
 ing up side reading prompted by the Lectures and 
 in initiative in becoming informed in subjects in 
 which one is interested. I think it may safely be 
 
BOOKS AND BOOKISHX^ESS 111 
 
 said of the General Libraries of our Seminaries that 
 they could well be used far more than they are. 
 Enterprise in that direction will incidentally help 
 in knowing what to buy, because later on the pur- 
 chasing instinct will move in the direction of one's 
 own development of taste and specialty, and he will 
 build up his alcoves around his interests, and so 
 minimize desultory buying. Then his principle of 
 selection will become well defined, the only lookout 
 necessary being to keep in mind breadth of read- 
 ing and buying as a safeguard against narrow 
 pedantry. 
 
 And so from small beginnings the library will 
 grow and each book will be an added pleasure and 
 your bookcase will become the article of furniture 
 that appeals to you most. Companionship with 
 even the backs of such friends turned towards you 
 will be sweet and salutary. As the shelves grow 
 and the means perhaps justifies systematic addition, 
 a wholesome bookishness will suggest several 
 sensible ways of using a principle of selection. 
 You will take some Standard Keview, you will scan 
 Review Columns and lists of new books in the 
 Church newspapers and avail yourselves of such 
 sampling of experts of what is brand new from the 
 presses. You will have your name on the mailing 
 list of experienced publishers of catalogues of second- 
 
112 APT AND MEET 
 
 hand books to pick up standard editions of Church 
 and classic literature of long standing. You will 
 consult some such Authority as Darling's Cyclojpoddia 
 JBihliogrwphica to learn what are the best editions 
 of Fathers or other writers of a given period. And 
 so you will surround yourself with tools for your 
 purpose as does the workman in his shop, and with 
 aids to your culture and vision as does the land- 
 scape artist with pigment and outlook. 
 
 This all presupposes that you are constantly 
 learning in the great book of human nature where 
 your every-day life in the Ministry will be a library 
 in itself. It will not interfere with, it will de- 
 cidedly help, your reading, so far as in you lieth, 
 yourselves and others "like a book." Newman 
 wrote his plain sermons, which are models of search- 
 ing treatment of the human heart, out of a scholar's 
 study. Bookishness may tempt to the life of the 
 recluse or the impracticable, but in this bustling 
 age to the Ministry of to-day it is not a serious 
 menace of anything like that. And on the other 
 hand the new Lambeth Encyclical urges that "Life- 
 long study is of the very essence of the work of the 
 priest." 
 
 And then above all things the Clergyman's 
 Library, whatever else its excellence, must, if built 
 on true lines, be in evidence of that priestly vow : 
 
BOOKS AND BOOKISHNESS 113 
 
 " Will you be diligent ... in reading the Holy 
 Scriptures, and such studies as help to the knowl- 
 edge of the same, by laying aside the study of the 
 world and the flesh? I will endeavor so to do, 
 the Lord being my helper." To be studious "in 
 reading and learning the Scriptures," " by daily 
 reading and weighing the Scriptures to wax riper 
 and stronger " in the Ministry, this requires a large 
 element of what might be called Scripture bookish- 
 ness on the part of the faithful priest. " The Book " 
 must really give the theme to that Library. Mere 
 electic or individualistic reading and library read- 
 ing do not fulfil the end. A library may repre- 
 sent simple fad growth. I have seen clerical 
 libraries where you might search in vain for a 
 single copy of the whole Bible on its shelves; 
 others where there were newer books upon almost 
 everything current but the Bible and that in evi- 
 dence perhaps in an antiquated commentary tucked 
 away in some corner. Of course anything that 
 deals with God's truth, especially upon its applica- 
 tion to great passing questions of mankind, is more 
 or less indirectly associated with His Book of Truth. 
 But however much one may profit by browsing 
 afield upon such fresh literature, that does not take 
 the place of the vow of direct study and reading. 
 And if such study and reading are first-hand 
 
114 APT AND MEET 
 
 matters with him, his Library can hardly help to 
 show it in his intelligent use of the direct help to 
 such study that contemporary scholarship supplies. 
 That means a keen interest from time to time to 
 add to the shelf distinctly and primarily volumes 
 of the literature which fortunately is so abundant 
 and accessible in our day, which is closely auxiliary 
 to the Bible and can be justly classified among 
 " such studies as help to the knowledge of the same." 
 There should be in a priest's library, somewhere in 
 its lines of books well proportioned with the whole, 
 a selection of titles new and old so suggestive of 
 Bible research that to look at them would almost 
 in itself suggest the collect for the Second Sunday 
 in Advent. Then perspective in Library building 
 becomes true. The Library builds the ministry, 
 the Bible builds the Library and He builds the 
 Bible who has charged us, " Ye search the Scrip- 
 tures because ye think in them ye have eternal 
 life: and these are they which bear witness of 
 Me." 
 
XV 
 
 MONEY MATTEES 
 
 If " the love of money is a root of all kinds of 
 evil " — as it rankly is in and out of the Ministry — 
 looseness in money matters, especially in the Church 
 sphere, produces a fertile crop all of its own. This 
 may come from a love of money or from an in- 
 difference to money. As against the former there 
 probably never has been an age when the Church 
 needed to pray more earnestly in the language of 
 the St. Matthew's Day Collect, " Grant us grace to 
 forsake all covetous desires and inordinate love of 
 riches." Clergy are by no means immune from 
 that close material besetment of the laity. But 
 many circumstances combine to make the danger 
 perhaps lie more in another direction to Candidates 
 for Holy Orders, not to say those admitted to Holy 
 Orders. There is a very common sentiment, often 
 expressed, that " the clergy have no business head " 
 that well indicates the danger. As in all such gen- 
 eral statements I believe the old maxim that "a 
 fallacy lurks in generalities " is to be well noted 
 here. Simple facts show time and time again that 
 
 so far from being the agents of looseness in money 
 
 115 
 
116 APT AND MEET 
 
 matters, or bunglers in finance, it is simple justice 
 to the Clergy to recognize that they have rescued 
 financial situations that business men have allowed 
 to become critical, and have shaped money policies 
 and adjusted money budgets which have won the 
 confidence and admiration of the best financiers. 
 It is then the veriest rubbish in the light of ex- 
 perience to rate even the average man in the 
 Sacred Office as a dupe or one who makes " ducks 
 and drakes " of it when it comes to money matters. 
 
 But all the same many a money difficulty could 
 be averted if proper care were exercised, and 
 proper warning were heeded at the outset to learn 
 to exercise such care in seeing that funds that come 
 under our control whether personal or public are 
 managed — as Clement of Alexandria of old put it 
 — " with wisdom, sobriety and piety." Our Lord 
 from a coin drew a wide lesson of punctilio in ren- 
 dering all our duties of citizenship. He scrupu- 
 lously balanced the account of tribute money due. 
 And let no one feel that it is safe or sound to toler- 
 ate in himself any happy-go-lucky views or habits 
 in this matter, however high his other ideals for the 
 ministry may be. Now, if ever, is the time to learn 
 right rules of the pocketbook and the Church funds. 
 
 Obviously with the narrow margins with which 
 the average man in a Divinity School has to 
 
MONEY MATTERS 117 
 
 reckon, he is obliged to think about, and school him- 
 self in the economies of "his ways and means." 
 No strange thing happens to him if he finds him- 
 self obliged to supplement any resource in his reach 
 with Scholarships or moderate loans. The outside 
 help no doubt has its temptations. There may be 
 one now and then who, as is said, " lies down upon 
 it " as a sort of easy access to an education and a 
 living. Perhaps it may tend to encourage indo- 
 lence and mediocrity with an easy-come, easy-go 
 view of money and life. Public utterances upon 
 alleged evils of beneficiary education do not permit 
 such temptations to be overlooked. And self-help 
 should be stimulated and urged to the limit. But 
 when that is all admitted, under present condi- 
 tions, when, for example, teaching which used to be 
 so frequent and available a resource for the self- 
 help of the student for the ministry, is now ever 
 narrowing to those who make it their noble pro- 
 fession, and give their whole time to it, the limit of 
 self-help would simply be prohibitory to hundreds 
 whom the ministry needs, and has been using as 
 foremost factors of its progress in the past. And 
 no true man conscientiously using such supplemen- 
 tary help beyond the limit of his own resource — 
 and every true man I have known would prefer to 
 do without it if he could — to realize his vocation, 
 
118 APT AND MEET 
 
 need have misgiving as it seems to me. The indis- 
 criminate faulting of beneficiary education which 
 would reason from acknowledged abuses to essen- 
 tial evil in any use of it, could not in consistency 
 stop short of challenging the effect of any student's 
 accepting the distributed benefit of the endow- 
 ments of a university. Even when he pays all his 
 current bills he gets his education far below the 
 actual cost by virtue of the revenues from the endow- 
 ment that somebody has provided. That margin 
 of difference really constitutes a beneficiary scholar- 
 ship. At any rate fresh from the recent Lambeth 
 Conference comes a Eesolution urging such " Ordi- 
 nation Candidates' Fund." And it will be time to 
 abolish all granted aid in the preparation for a 
 special calling in life which is avowedly not a 
 money-getting one, when the Government abolishes 
 its present system of providing entire cost of prep- 
 aration for its Army and Navy at West Point and 
 Annapolis. If it be said that both of those Institu- 
 tions contemplate selection and so an element of 
 competition, what but that underlies the whole con- 
 ception of the Church and the Canons that there 
 must be both a personal sense of call and scrutiny 
 with many stages of test as to whether the Candi- 
 date is "apt and meet." 
 
 There is, however, all the more reason why the 
 
MONEY MATTERS 119 
 
 value of money should be interpreted aright in 
 thrift and sensible spending. Some succeed in cal- 
 culating to always keep a little ahead out of a 
 minimum sum. Others are always behind with a 
 maximum amount. In nine cases out of ten the 
 difference lies in the simple getting down to facing 
 figures and acting accordingly without allowing 
 matters to run and taking things for granted. The 
 one looks ahead, figures how he is coming out and 
 always knows where he stands. The other dreads 
 the knowing, keeps little or no account of anything 
 and only has the sharp reminder of the bills that 
 have overrun his means. Laxity grows upon the 
 latter and unless he turns to the right about, there is 
 the prediction of a man who has a career before 
 him of chronic anxiety and perhaps of an impecuni- 
 ous ministry and that serious loss of caste among 
 business men which comes from neglect of ordinary 
 business obligations. The best managers must 
 sometimes borrow and many a successful priest has 
 been obliged to do it to cover cost of preparation or 
 of special disabilities, but there is all the difference 
 in the world between such loans punctiliously re- 
 deemed or attended to and a demoralizing habit of 
 borrowing to patch along which betrays shiftless- 
 ness and seriously qualifies usefulness, and indeed 
 soon finds a ban upon its own opportunities. 
 
120 APT AND MEET 
 
 And this which applies to one's own money mat- 
 ters is even of more vital consequence in that deal- 
 ing with Church Funds that every clergyman must 
 expect more or less in the discharge of his duties. 
 It is a good rule to relegate the custodianship of 
 every Fund possible to competent and trustworthy 
 laity, or at least to hold any such funds jointly with 
 them. In any event there should be an annual or 
 more frequent Statement and Audit of all such 
 funds in the interest of those who hold them, to say 
 nothing of the Church. All Trust Funds should 
 show their full history on your books and so explain 
 themselves with vouchers, etc. If, as in some cases, 
 the alms for the poor, for example, a fund must be 
 confidential, the certificate of some discreet Church 
 officer appointed as Auditor can be read to the Con- 
 gregation or published without the detailed items 
 of the Statement. This will require — on the part 
 of the clerical custodian — I am not here speaking of 
 like conscience in Lay Custodianship — some simple 
 knowledge of keeping accounts which can easily be 
 acquired from some good business parishioner (and 
 it is intended to have some especial instruction upon 
 this in your course here), and systematic keeping of 
 such accounts as under the audit of the Lord. And 
 when money is to go to such accounts from the 
 alms basons, see to it, or have some one see to it, 
 
MONEY MATTERS 121 
 
 that at once the money is taken from the alms 
 basons and counted (by more than one, if practi- 
 cable) and not left around exposed on the credence 
 or in vestry rooms as I have sometimes seen it, at 
 any interval when after service you are busied 
 about other things. It will follow if you are 
 exacting upon yourself in a sensitiveness to Church 
 money matters, you will gradually group around 
 you Treasurers for various Departments of like 
 mind and habit. 
 
 It amounts to this then — efficiency and rectitude 
 in your money matters both in private and Church 
 accounts, as a clergyman will depend upon your 
 high sense of stewardship. And as a closing word 
 we need to probe that somewhat deeply with a 
 wholesome hint. Far more than you will be likely 
 to realize, your own genuine sense of stewardship 
 will affect the whole atmosphere of your congrega- 
 tion. Living it will go further than the most 
 cogent teaching it. And living it implies some- 
 thing back of these ordinary habits of prudence in 
 money matters of which I have just been speaking. 
 Living a sense of stewardship is no less than being 
 faithful over that which is least in the way of in- 
 come as you would wish the wealthiest parishioner 
 to be faithful over that which is much. In a word 
 the clergy must show the example of conscientious 
 
122 APT AND MEET 
 
 sense of what they have by conscientious appro- 
 priation of some part of it to God's work, if they 
 would expect to influence their people to do it. 
 Thou that teachest giving by principle to God, dost 
 thou give by principle ? The blessing of it can be 
 tested by even the small salary, and the lesson of it 
 should be learned in the Divinity School if not 
 earlier. Estimates of expense should include some- 
 thing for systematic offering, something for God, 
 however small from small resource. The Holy 
 Communion gives even a sacramental character to 
 the high duty as we place something of our own 
 avowedly in the oblations. And the secret of 
 right-mindedness in money matters all through, and 
 of the sweetness of giving and leading others to give 
 is found nowhere as in that realization of steward- 
 ship deepened, sanctified and empowered in our 
 learning what it is to offer of " our own " just as 
 we offer " ourselves, our souls and bodies " in direct 
 sacramental association with the " One Offering " of 
 Him who gave Himself for us. May you by the 
 grace of God give that sentiment from an ancient 
 Liturgy which encircles the rim of our chapel alms 
 bason ^o\ ra Id dno tq)v Imv^ illumination in every life 
 and every ministry which goes out from these walls. 
 
TACT 
 
 Laymen may be pardoned for sometimes wonder- 
 ing in their utilitarian moments why it would not 
 be a good idea for Divinity Schools to have a De- 
 partment on Tact somewhat as West Point has one 
 on Tactics. Vestries generally put that among the 
 first qualifications when they are looking around to 
 fill vacancies. The lack of tact is one of the first 
 things you are apt to hear whether justly or other- 
 wise assigned as a reason for not getting on in the 
 Ministry. And so though in the perspective its 
 place in relation to deeper qualifications may easily 
 be exaggerated, and though I have never heard of 
 a manual upon it, nor a professor's Chair endowed 
 for it, it is obvious that any Training School for 
 the Ministry can be legitimately expected to have 
 some answer to the question. What are you doing 
 about it ? The test of the flying machine is whether 
 it will fly. And the world with reason looks to the 
 ministry to see whether it ministers. Theory, ma- 
 chinery, buoyancy, equipment for sky wardness may 
 all be carefully wrought out in preparation for the 
 air-ship's fulfilling its claim. But if it flops and 
 
 123 
 
124 APT AND MEET 
 
 flounders and gets out of gear and tangled in its 
 handling, down it must go, as one did the other 
 day simply because the operator as he said turned 
 a certain lever the wrong way. And it is just that 
 turning some lever of the delicate machinery of 
 parish administration "the wrong way" which 
 oftentimes exposes a lack of tact and wrecks real 
 usefulness. And for purposes of producing results 
 — parish " pragmatism " — if we wish a high-sound- 
 ing term — tact might well be defined as skill in 
 putting on power with the right turns of the right 
 levers. If you ever come across a book entitled 
 "The Curate of Cumberworth and the Vicar of 
 Eoost " you will enjoy the clever satire of doing 
 just the opposite of this both on the part of the 
 fresh curate and of the seasoned vicar. You will 
 readily grant that a Divinity School ought to have 
 something to say about this branch of getting on, 
 but what ? 
 
 For the most part it is a question which simply 
 must be passed up beyond any chair of teaching 
 and any curriculum to the man himself. Even in 
 such an attempt to counsel as this, the suggestions 
 must perhaps seem diffuse and of the sort of which 
 a man says to himself, " I do not seem to get much 
 out of them." To be sure hints on pastoral work, 
 and on the practical preaching and teaching of 
 
TACT 125 
 
 what is absorbed in tlie course, enable every chair 
 to contribute something to that resultant of char- 
 acter which the French call savoir faire. But 
 knack, you after all have to acquire yourselves. 
 And when you once realize that, you will appreci- 
 ate that here and now is the opportunity to begin, 
 however much you may have to learn of tact by the 
 actual contact with people later. And perhaps this 
 is one of the most valuable counsels I can give you. 
 And the real Scriptural formula for tact is the 
 Master's own maxim to His Apostles, when He sent 
 them forth " as sheep in the midst of wolves " : 
 " Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as 
 doves." They were never meant to crawl as ser- 
 pents nor to coo as doves, to just one point of re- 
 semblance in each case the counsel confined itself. 
 The wisdom of the serpent is guarded against the 
 venom of the serpent by the cautioning of the 
 dove's trait of harmlessness, and the simplicity of 
 the dove was to be supplemented by the nimbleness 
 of the serpent. The correlation of these two traits 
 belongs to self-cultivation in the graces of the Holy 
 Spirit. That makes balance and saves one-sidedness 
 which sometimes tries to mask itself under tact. 
 Mere cleverness without that gift of the Holy Spirit 
 for which the dove may happily be the symbol — 
 that gift of " thinking no evil," as a part of growth 
 
126 APT AND MEET 
 
 in the Spiritual virtue of love — may lead to thinly 
 disguised " foxiness " or craft and casuistry which 
 the world itself distrusts. Good-natured or lazy 
 trying to hurt nobody's feelings or dealings, as a 
 chronic time-server without discernment of duty or 
 principle, makes a sort of fool's paradise of a field, 
 bound to have a rude awakening. But between 
 priestcraft and mere honhorame^ by God's grace, 
 every man can school himself into that gracious 
 education in right-mindedness and directness of up- 
 right aim which is in its true realization, tact. Or 
 to use an old proverb it is the learning to " conse- 
 crate common sense." Even if one is not of that 
 class which seems to be born to tact there is no 
 reason to despair, the grace of God rightly used will 
 be sufficient to acquire it. Tact may be called a 
 sort of composite gift. And one who habitually 
 prays as bidden in the Ordinal for " the heavenly 
 assistance of the Holy Ghost " in the spirit of the 
 hymn 
 
 ^* Come Holy Spirit, heavenly dove, . 
 With all Thy quickening powers," 
 
 finds a result in ministerial character which blends 
 gentleness and force in a new sense of progress in 
 consecrated tact. It becomes veritably a spiritual 
 gift to which any one may aspire. 
 
TACT 127 
 
 This kind that cometh forth from such intelligent 
 self-training soon justifies itself in experience. For 
 example it enables one to smooth the way of the 
 work by a finer sense of consideration for others 
 and a finer perspective in the importance of issues 
 that arise. Tact forestalls the wishes and even the 
 whims of others and so prevents many an issue of 
 weak or wilful human nature. If questions arise it 
 can always pick out important ones from unimpor- 
 tant ones and however necessary it may be to stand 
 by the former, it never agitates the latter all out 
 of proportion to their importance. The eccentric 
 Yicar of Morwenstow, worthy as he was in so many 
 ways, and wearing a medal made of a nugget sent 
 him by a California sailor whose life he had saved, 
 as of many others, on that rock-bound Cornish 
 coast, set his congregation all by the ears over the 
 question whether the church roof should be repaired 
 with slate or with shingles, insisting upon the latter 
 because wood was used in the ark and for the cross ! 
 And how many a parish breeze is raised over matters 
 with no particular principle involved where a dis- 
 creet eye to the really main points would have 
 waived and saved it all in the interest of greater 
 issues. St. Paul had something like that in mind 
 when he wrote to the Komans, " For meat destroy 
 not the work of God." 
 
128 APT AND MEET 
 
 And tact in personal affairs is very valuable. It 
 will set a watch before the mouth and keep the door 
 of the lips. It will save callowness in the curate. 
 It will be careful not to bore parishioners or friends 
 with long calls or long dissertations in private or 
 public. It will impel true priestly breeding in 
 gentle nanners and thoughtful words and deeds and 
 social amenities and true culture. It will assimilate 
 the bearing to the classic ideals of the best types of 
 Clergymen as they are portrayed in English litera- 
 ture in Chaucer, Herbert, Goldsmith, Keble and 
 biography all along. It would soon make extinct 
 any specimen of a clerical churl. 
 
 And even in that so determining, if so delicate, a 
 matter to touch upon as marriage, something very 
 like this sound tact counts for much both in useful- 
 ness and happiness. We need not here enter into the 
 wider question of the vocation to a single or a mar- 
 ried life further than to recognize its deep search- 
 ings in both directions to a conscientious mind. 
 But if the devotion to the single life be not the voca- 
 tion that seems to be binding — and I suppose in 
 more than one Seminary the after happy marriages 
 of their members show that " celibate clubs " may 
 prematurely avow themselves — good sense and tact 
 will dictate some things to him that will love 
 married life and see good days. He will not choose 
 
•FTHE 
 V ^ OF 
 
 TACT ""^'^yiP^ai^ 129 
 
 a companion to whom the clergyman's life will be 
 uncongenial, or who will not be in full accord with 
 his priestly vow to frame and fashion his family 
 as well as himself according to the Doctrines of 
 Christ and to make both himself and his family, 
 as much as in him lieth, wholesome examples and 
 patterns to the flock of Christ. He will not marry 
 until he can see a reasonable hope of ways and 
 means. Once married he will honor the wife with 
 his best rather than his fretful side and let no busy 
 parish stir crowd out her due in his home, as he 
 realizes how burdens may be there shared and 
 lightened and the joy of the work deepened 
 when, as King James intimated to the Puritan Dr. 
 Eainolds as he was objecting to some expression 
 in the Marriage Service, he has " a good wife him- 
 self." 
 
 That, however, which will put tact to its full 
 priestly test and so prove its highest value in your 
 ministry, will be its exercise in fulfilling your vow 
 to *^ maintain and set forward as much as lieth in 
 you, quietness, peace and love, among all Christian 
 people, and especially among them that are or shall 
 be committed to your charge." This is that which 
 solemnly binds you to the unfailing duty, and it 
 carries with it the choice blessing of the peace- 
 maker. Note most earnestly that it is no mere 
 
130 APT AND MEET 
 
 preference nor incident on the circumference of your 
 work. It lies at the heart of things. Not only- 
 must the one in charge of a congregation not be the 
 cause through his carelessness or lack of tact, of 
 alienations and disruptions or getting a condition of 
 "sixes and sevens," but by all that is sacred he is 
 put in his position to eliminate so far as he can all 
 such tendencies to strife. He is no passenger in the 
 parish in these matters, his post is a steering one. 
 He must of course take things as he finds them, but 
 woe if he fails to realize that in these respects of 
 promoting quietness, peace and love he is not by any 
 means to leave things as he finds them. He must ex- 
 pect to find unreasonable people that jar him and jar 
 others. Then envy and strife, confusion and evil- 
 working are ever cropping out. He may deplore 
 in himself qualities that prompt him to return in 
 kind or to adopt drastic measures, in fact to be a 
 touchy parson or a peppery one. But just there 
 either the mischief begins for his work, or he rises 
 to his true level as a priest and is on his mettle to 
 use all the tact and grace he can summon to bring 
 about better understandings, mollify situations 
 and sink his own personal feelings in the high en- 
 deavor to have a change come over the face of the 
 congregation as it so often does with kindly and 
 patient and prayerful dealing. That is tact in its 
 
TACT 131 
 
 noblest and sweetest expression in the work. Pastor 
 and people come to have a sort of feeling of blessing 
 as if Christ had Himself calmed the troubled surface 
 with His own " Peace be still." 
 
XVII 
 
 << GETTING OUT AMONG THE PEOPLE '^ 
 
 This phrase is exactly quoted from an up-to- 
 date layman's lips to express his idea of the trait of 
 being a good pastor. It smacks of this stirring 
 century as that quaint caption of one of George 
 Herbert's chapters in his classic "Priest to the 
 Temple," " The Parson in Circuit " did of his 
 rural conditions. And though the modern clergy- 
 man may cover distance in an automobile while the 
 devoted Priest of Bemerton must trudge on foot or 
 take the gig, parishioners' hearts and priest's hearti- 
 ness in their work must come close together with 
 the same ideals if the congregation is to be a true 
 cure of souls. The Ordinal is very specific and 
 insistent as to pastoral visiting. Embodied in one 
 of the Deacon's vows is the requirement " it is his 
 oflB^ce, when provision is so made, to search for the 
 sick, poor and impotent people of the Parish." 
 In like manner the Priest solemnly promises " to 
 use both public and private monitions and exhorta- 
 tions, as well to the sick as to the whole, within 
 your cures." He is charged " to seek for Christ's 
 sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for His chil- 
 
 132 
 
"getting out among the people" 133 
 
 dren who are in the midst of this naughty world." 
 And so the old saying, " A house-going parson makes 
 a Church-going people " loses nothing of its value 
 by its age, if the Ordinal is sound in its provisions. 
 The layman is right when he says, " We need a 
 pastor who will get out among his people," by all 
 the best traditions of the Ministry as well as by a 
 present-day utilitarian standard of producing re- 
 sults. And this is, by no means, to overlook other 
 gifts of vocation including the cloister call to per- 
 sonal and priestly intercession. 
 
 Of course there must be good sense and clear 
 and consecrated purpose in parish calling. Merely 
 social calling has its place and demands and no one 
 should be more punctilious about it than the clergy- 
 man who generally starts with the presumption 
 that he is a gentleman. But social calling at the 
 home of a parishioner, on lines of congenial tastes 
 or associations, has at best only indirect relation 
 to the higher duty and if not done with discretion 
 may resolve itself into falling into a habit of visit- 
 ing only a small round of parishioners, and that 
 with little or no real character of parish visiting 
 about it. Then on the other hand parish calling 
 may be done in a perfunctory, professional sort of 
 way making the whole thing a kind of boredom 
 to all concerned. The clerical visitor may put it in 
 
134 APT AND MEET 
 
 his routine as a matter of so many names to be 
 checked on his list of parishioners and so many- 
 buttons for him to press at front doors while those 
 within "do the rest," and with a sense of relief 
 when no one is at home. With anything like that 
 the pastor is apt to get out among his people as 
 might the gas meter inspector on his regular beat, 
 to read the register of something, — in his case the 
 number of parish calls he can make. No, profitable 
 parish visiting is no less than a sacred function of 
 the high office, if the Ordinal is not all a mistake. 
 There must be, regular habits and times of it. It 
 must be initiated and constantly attended with 
 prayer, — prayer for the visitor and prayer for those 
 visited, prayer for guidance in advising and teach- 
 ing, comforting and meeting difficulties and doubts, 
 prayer for individuals and special trials and temp- 
 tations and conditions of individuals and homes, 
 prayer in the closet before starting, prayer at the 
 door in the spirit of the benediction with which the 
 Office for the Visitation of the Sick opens, " Peace 
 be to this house and to all that dwell in it," prayer 
 if practicable before leaving and prayer after the 
 day's calling for its omissions and its blessings. 
 Religious literature must be studied to have some- 
 thing handy in the pocket to leave upon topics de- 
 veloped in the conversation, or to send later. Con- 
 
135 
 
 versation must be led when practicable — and tact 
 and the finer sense will guard one against anything 
 artificial or intrusive as they will find ways of 
 evoking confidences and hunger to talk upon 
 serious matters which may be shrinking under even 
 an apparently indifferent exterior — to the deeper 
 matters of personal religion. Obviously this ideal 
 must come under many limitations. Many a call 
 there must be, when the presence of other callers, or 
 the passing mood and like things will leave only the 
 evidence of the call itself — and that is by no means 
 nil — as an expression of your pastoral heart. But if 
 you keep a careful list of your people in your calling 
 book, revised always to date, and mark the dates of 
 your visits and frequently consult it to keep yourself 
 informed and keen as to the homes you have not 
 visited, and then when you make your calls, make 
 them with some such high purpose as I have tried to 
 indicate in the ideals to which I have referred, there 
 will be no danger of your laymen deploring the fact 
 that you have many good qualities but "somehow you 
 do not seem to get out among your people ! " And 
 if you say how am I in all the occupations of my 
 parish, its thousand and one pressing concerns, its 
 committees, its time for study and its preparation 
 for the pulpit to find time free for all this, the 
 answer can only be that the very vows of the min- 
 
136 APT AND MEET 
 
 istry put it among your primary duties. And better 
 find departments whicii will relieve you of some 
 of those other things not stressed in the Ordinal, 
 and get down and get back to this. Furthermore 
 you need it, as was said of Charles Kingsley, that 
 " it was from his regular house to house visiting in 
 the week still more than his Church Services that 
 he acquired his power," in his first building up the 
 sadly neglected parish at Eversley. He needed it 
 " for his own heart's sake as well as for their souls' 
 sake." And I believe many an afternoon which 
 may mark a temperamental dread of leaving the 
 study as you start out resolutely for the calls, will 
 verily glow at the end as you have been reading 
 in the lives of your people lessons of trust and 
 humility, as well as needs of your message that 
 inspire your own life as well as your sermons. The 
 practical " modernism " of parish pressure which 
 would lose, or justify the loss of this real joy of 
 the ministry and this real contribution to the 
 heart and appropriation of its message, is a 
 phase of our Church life to be very carefully scruti- 
 nized. 
 
 But besides this systematic calling, and besides 
 mingling with the people in civic and like move- 
 ments which lie outside of our present theme, there 
 is the whole opportunity for special calling, in con- 
 
"GETTING OUT AMONG THE PEOPLE" 137 
 
 firmation work, in affliction of any sort — and no 
 faithful pastor will let many hours slip by after 
 hearing of a parishioner's trouble before he is with 
 him if he can reach him, — in the special joys of the 
 homes and in any of the exigencies of life when an 
 alert pastor can show his interest and love for his 
 people and so bind them to the Church, Never let 
 your people under such circumstances wonder why 
 you have not been to see them, after you have knowl- 
 edge of the experience that has come to them. 
 
 But the " making a Conscience " of the Visitation 
 of the Sick should have a special word of its own. 
 That is a test of your whole pastoral interest. You 
 can hardly have much heart in your ministry with- 
 out having some heart in that. Any kind of get- 
 ting out among your people will not count for much 
 unless you get out among the sick-rooms of your 
 people. This implies familiarity with the principles 
 which underlie the Office in the Prayer Book for 
 the "Visitation of the Sick," and for the "Com- 
 munion of the Sick." The rubrics in those Offices 
 should be studied not only for themselves but for 
 their history and their hints. Tou may seldom use 
 the Office for the Visitation of the Sick as a whole, 
 but it is full of suggestions for sick visiting, as for 
 example affording you themes for your talk with 
 sick people in the exhortations, and for interces- 
 
138 . APT AND MEET 
 
 sions in the prayers, and for counseling upon ques- 
 tions which may rest upon the mind of the sick as 
 to forgiveness, disposition of worldly affairs, etc. 
 With the mind saturated with such Prayer Book 
 principles you will learn how to use the sick-room 
 to the best spiritual advantage, shaping prayers 
 which you may wish to adapt to special circum- 
 stances, guiding you in the selection of Scriptural 
 and other reading and enabling you to do the right 
 thing in emergencies or when the time must be very 
 short. 
 
 This will also train you into sane and intelligent 
 and charitable judgment about matters which lie 
 outside of the Prayer Book, or in which the Prayer 
 Book prescribes optional courses. Within the legit- 
 imate bounds you will have an open mind, or if 
 you have a fixed conviction, a charitable mind to- 
 wards those who dijBfer from you as to the mooted 
 matters of unction, confession, and the like. What- 
 ever your decided standpoint you will take it from 
 the high interest in the spiritual welfare of the 
 sick, and not from mere prejudice or impervious- 
 ness of opinion. The question with you will be of 
 conveying the utmost comfort of Christ and the 
 Church to the sick one through your ministry, with 
 an anxiety that nothing may fail of that through 
 your lack of calling or of turning every call to best 
 
"getting out among the people" 139 
 
 account. In a word you will deepen in the hope to 
 become more and more a sick-room expert in your 
 ministry. 
 
 And this opens up the new purview which seems 
 coming to the ministry. What is known as 
 " Psychotheraphy " is rapidly developing a " move- 
 ment " and producing a literature to which it seems 
 to me no clergyman can be indiflferent. Having its 
 recent disclosure a good deal in the enterprise of 
 one of our own prominent clergymen and one 
 especially qualified by ability, training and posi- 
 tion to associate with himself the best skill and 
 professional judgment of the medical profession, the 
 text-book of it, " Eeligion and Medicine " is having 
 a wide reading as will the other expert writing 
 upon it that will follow. It all marks something of 
 a new era in the possibilities of dealing with the 
 sick. It bids fair to recast methods and mark 
 progressive science both in the realm of physiology 
 and psychology. It has already evolved new 
 coordination between the physician of the body and 
 the pastor of souls and unified both as co-workers 
 for the healing of the personality which includes 
 both. We may dream of its getting the Church it- 
 self more out among the people in its wise extension 
 as a movement. If it is to do that you of the 
 coming clergy must be drawn into the study of it. 
 
140 APT AND MEET 
 
 For the clergy at large it is important to widen 
 and deepen this study stage of it. And so its ap- 
 proved literature should command your earnest at- 
 tention. Perhaps our Divinity Schools as well as 
 our Medical Colleges may find it a necessary part of 
 the curriculum in the near future. Its periodicals 
 will submit it to all the challenge and criticism with 
 which the age confronts new movements. That 
 will all be to its advantage as a test of its real place 
 in the clergyman's work with the sick. But those 
 most expert in it thus far, and those knowing most 
 of it are most positive in their caution to go slowly 
 in the matter. They realize how essential is the 
 study and the expert knowledge and indeed the ex- 
 periment in its untried fields by those competent. 
 I only briefly refer to it here and now to recognize 
 it as already having justified its claim to such study 
 in any wide realization of what the ministry owes 
 the sick, and as having a place in any counsel upon 
 your sick ministrations when you take your place as 
 clergymen endeavoring to be apt and meet for the 
 work of to-day. Though in some respects a " new 
 thing under the sun " it bears marks of having in it 
 something as old as the Master's maxims and as He 
 went about doing good, we may find in it another 
 means of getting out among the people. 
 
XVIII 
 
 <<THE CLOTH" 
 
 "Young men, likewise, exhort to be sober- 
 minded." Translated into the speech of modern 
 youth this counsel of St. Paul would probably 
 amount to — "Be level-headed." But in addition 
 to that common caution to young men to know 
 " what is what " in the best making of their young 
 manhood, keeping clear of pitfalls and treading 
 carefully in right paths of progress, St. Paul goes 
 further with one who is to take Holy Orders. 
 Likewise must the deacons be grave. And here we 
 come upon a word confessedly needing some study 
 of the original New Testament word back of it 
 in order to catch its exact force. Trench, after a 
 critical examination of the word (Tefiv6($ as found four 
 times in the Epistles of Timothy and Titus and its 
 cognate (refivoTT)^^ as found three times in the same 
 Epistles, says it must be owned that " grave " and 
 " gravity " are renderings which fail to cover the 
 full meaning of their original. Malvolio in Twelfth 
 Night is grave but his very gravity is itself ridicu- 
 lous, and the word we want is one in which the 
 
 sense of gravity and dignity, and of these as invit- 
 
 141 
 
142 APT AND MEET 
 
 ing reverence, is combined : a word which I fear 
 we may look for long without finding.^ The diflft- 
 culty seems to be to fit two meanings to one Eng- 
 lish term, as if to measure twins for a single suit of 
 clothes. And the quality identified in priestly 
 character is itself easier to recognize than to de- 
 scribe, a subtile something majestic and awe-inspir- 
 ing in its more marked possession, as it was said for 
 example to exist in Pusey, to whom this very Greek 
 word especially appealed. I think I have read 
 somewhere of his having used the expression " that 
 blessed (refivoTTj^.^^ Trench tells us that " in profane 
 Greek ffefiuSg is a constant epithet of the gods. 
 ... It is used also constantly to qualify such 
 things as pertain to, or otherwise stand in any very 
 near relation with the heavenly world." St. Paul 
 and St. Barnabas, we may believe, had it when the 
 people at Lystra would have done sacrifice unto 
 them. St. Peter and St. John had it when the 
 Council at Jerusalem before which they had been 
 haled took knowledge of them that they had been 
 with Jesus. It was, we may reasonably think, in 
 the look of St. Stephen when in the fore-dawn of 
 his martyr glory, all that sat in that other Council, 
 looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had 
 been the face of an angel. 
 
 * '* Synonyms of the New Testament," p. 348. 
 
143 
 
 Now when the ministry is spoken of as "The 
 Cloth " it is the world's way of designating it as a 
 class — ^knowing it by its uniform so to speak. The 
 phrase originating from a distinguishing garb con- 
 notes the calling as a whole as it is, even according 
 to every-day standards, supposed to be set apart for 
 especial functions of well-doing and leadership. 
 Outward badges and wardrobes will show this ac- 
 cording to tastes. There will be extremes, the in- 
 tensely clerical and the as intensely secular tailor- 
 ing, both of which have free play in our American 
 life, the crowd in the street scarcely giving a second 
 thought to the conspicuous cut of the severely ec- 
 clesiastical make-up and swallowing up as one of 
 itself the other cleric who as decidedly wishes to 
 dress like other people and sometimes even outdoes 
 the man on the street in flamboyant neckwear and 
 sporting costume. So far as the fabric and fashion 
 of " the cloth " are concerned, there must be the play 
 of preference, only the clerical dandy on the one 
 hand, and the unclerical disguise on the other, do 
 divert people's minds from main questions and when 
 one betrays an undue mind upon the place of 
 professional dress, and the other is tempted to dis- 
 semble his calling in affecting a garb which will 
 save him from ever being taken for a parson, there 
 is some serious thinking to be done. And so it is 
 
144 APT AND MEET 
 
 with outward mannerisms in the service and in the 
 street. I am not referring to varieties of habits of 
 real reverence nor of ordinary marks of individu- 
 ality, but to mere mannerisms that provoke com- 
 ment upon clergymen as clergymen. I suppose no 
 one would wish a " Cuddeson stoop " or a dramatic 
 reading of the lessons to be the first thing in the 
 current small talk by which he is known to be dif- 
 ferent from others, but alas, it is sometimes even so. 
 All this, however, you will readily appreciate be- 
 longs to the outside and does not touch the real 
 heart of what is called, and is, " reverence for the 
 cloth." To evoke that and to hold it, the man in 
 the ministry must have in some degree in his per- 
 sonality that very quality which St. Paul puts at 
 the threshold of Holy Orders, so inadequately trans- 
 lated " gravity." He must in some measure attain 
 to (Tefivdg and by God's grace find an atmosphere for 
 his life and work, of trefivdTTjg, At sight then, though 
 they may never be able to analyze it or express it, 
 his people, yes all people will recognize that he has 
 something which interprets to them the true classi- 
 fication of the cloth. He will illustrate Emerson's 
 saying that " men of character are the conscience 
 of society." He will be one to whom they will 
 wish, as they say, " to tie up to in trouble." He 
 will possess something which will impress them as 
 
145 
 
 " having the root of the matter in him." He will 
 make good his vocation and not a " white choker " 
 but a white soul will be his credential, not profes- 
 sionalism but priestly character will be his con- 
 sciousness of his " cloth." 
 
 There is a profound sense in which the Holy- 
 Spirit itself beareth witness with the spirit of man, 
 humbled with his own un worthiness, that he is " a 
 man apart." "Yet not I but the grace of God 
 which is with me " is his own resting in the rever- 
 ence for his office. The spirit of heaviness which 
 must now and then threaten him in the personal 
 shortcomings in his work finds in that mystic wit- 
 ness the garment of peace as the inner symbol of 
 " the cloth." 
 
 But while priestly character-growths have this 
 mystery of bloom and fruitage that we can experi- 
 ence but not explore, there are some plain facts 
 which are very closely related to it of which we 
 should take cognizance here. Two, at any rate, of 
 the marks of this healthy growth are the deepening 
 in 1st, the joy of service and 2d, the peace of God. 
 
 "With Wynn's charming chapters on "The Joy 
 of the Ministry" I need not do more here than 
 commend to you the reading, and the rereading of 
 that book. While the truest leaders of men are 
 striking as a very note for our new century ideals of 
 
146 APT AND MEET 
 
 Service, as in the central theme of the Encyclical of 
 the last Lambeth Conference, the Ministry soon car- 
 ries one on from the duty of service to its privilege 
 and its joy. " God, whose I am and whom I 
 serve " was the sustaining thought of the Apostle in 
 a dark hour. The very name Diaconate as it 
 emphasizes service betokens the true key to strike 
 in the overture to the music of the ministry. And 
 that ideal should take possession of you more and 
 more here. Cast your musings for your first field 
 of work after ordination not in terms of what kind 
 of a living shall I get, but, as I believe you will, 
 what kind of a serving can I give. Fix that habit 
 of looking at your ministry and you are already 
 cultivating the ffsfivoTT)^ of the priest. 
 
 And then closely akin to that joy of service is 
 the peace of God. No priest who pronounces that 
 in the blessing of " the peace of God which passeth 
 all understanding," should fail to appreciate how 
 much he needs that very blessing to apply to his 
 own life and work, that it may keep — or literally 
 buttress — him in heart and mind in the knowledge 
 and love of God. The saintly Bishop Andrewes 
 following precedents prayed against " the luke- 
 warmness of Accidy " — and the very strangeness of 
 the word will enable us to understand how it once 
 for a while dropped out of the dictionary. He put 
 
"the cloth" 147 
 
 it among the seven principal sins, as a sin lying at 
 the source of other sins. It seems to mean a fagged 
 spirit, listless and weary of the world, discouraged, 
 hopeless tending to melancholia and imbued with 
 the "sorrow of the world." In the ministry it 
 might perhaps be negatively described as an ag- 
 gravated lack of the peace of God. Kestlessness, 
 loss of heart, perf unctoriness, hollowness of service 
 and revulsion from low ideals or levels of life and 
 work are symptoms of it. The word had a mediaeval 
 application to monks who found they had no heart 
 for their cloistered life. There seems to be in it 
 something of a very antithesis to the peace of God. 
 And if its symptoms are detected early and its sig- 
 nificance understood in its first stages, prayer 
 against it and patient dealing with it as with any 
 other temptation or sin will be efficacious. That is 
 one of the advantages of being able to recognize 
 and correct tendencies of character here, and in such 
 determining matters of the ministry to remember 
 remedies in the days of the youth while the evil days 
 of later experiences come out. And the secret of 
 priestly serenity lies in the progressive meaning we 
 can put into that primary plea of our nature spoken 
 or sacramental : " Lamb of God, who takest 
 away the sin of the world. Grant us Thy peace." 
 Many a roving ministry, many a rebellious mood 
 
14:8 APT AND MEET 
 
 can be saved and many a type of patient continu- 
 ance in well-doing be fixed by prompt and early at- 
 tention to this peace which Christ has left to His 
 Ministry. 
 
 The cloth that covers a heart to which such ex- 
 periences are not strange will always hold its own in 
 the respect and regard of the people. It will count 
 for courage and hopefulness as it is able to temper 
 service with peace and deepen peace with service. 
 Pusey's poise in this respect was a great strength of 
 his character. Years ago I remember to have 
 heard Dr. Hatch whose Bampton Lectures showed 
 predilections of a sort which would certainly not 
 indicate bias towards either upon whom he was 
 commenting, speak strongly of Dr. Pusey's singular 
 hopefulness of mind ever in contrast with that of 
 his great admirer Liddon. And the blunt maxim 
 of the old English Bishop, " Serve God and be 
 cheerful," partakes of the same spirit. And so may 
 you become, and so may all within these walls help 
 you to become, " Sanctified and meet for the Master's 
 use and prepared unto every good work," each one 
 
 '^ Steadfast set to do his part, 
 Yet fearing most his own vain hearf 
 
XIX 
 PEAYEE FOE VOCATION 
 
 We shall not " grope as if we had no eyes " in 
 wonderment about a due supply for the ministry, if 
 we try to see the problem as Christ saw it. And 
 He has plainly given us access to His view-point. 
 He has let us into the working of His own mind. 
 To Him, we may reverently infer, the difficulty was 
 not with the field. Probably in point of fact con- 
 ditions since have never been as unpromising as 
 when He came to His own and His own received 
 Him not. His own tears over Jerusalem because it 
 would not know the things that belong to its peace 
 must have come from a far more poignant sense of 
 a showing of obstacles thdn any minister of His 
 since has ever been called upon to encounter. And 
 yet to Him, with all that, the harvest truly was 
 plenteous and the fields were white unto the harvest. 
 It was no dismaying outlook on the century nor de- 
 terrent local considerations that He stressed as the 
 trouble. There was really no cause for concern 
 about the harvest. 
 
 And further the supply of laborers for the harvest 
 149 
 
150 APT AND MEET 
 
 as He puts the matter to us was a matter not pri- 
 marily dependent upon some things we are apt to 
 think of first. We must think of such things as 
 making due support for the ministry, in its thorough 
 preparation, in its active work and in its old age. 
 We must have due regard for parental and pastoral 
 shaping and influence. We must keep the ideals on 
 a chivalric rather than a sordid plane. We must 
 exploit right manhood in the ministry and turn 
 Sydney Smith's witticism about mankind consisting 
 of three classes, to wit : " men, women and clergy- 
 men," into an axiom that clergymen are only called 
 to be men apart that they may be the more truly 
 "all things to all men." Wrong sentiment about 
 any of these things does undoubtedly cause hin- 
 drance and needs attention and correction, but that 
 is not the remedial and reinforcing measure that 
 Christ makes of primary importance. The specific 
 He does urge and urge with a significance that can- 
 not fail to come home to every one anxious to see a 
 wider stir of interest in the Students' Eecruit Move- 
 ment, and other like agencies for putting more of 
 our young men and young women into the direct 
 work of the Master's Harvest-field, is just good old- 
 fashioned prayer, " Pray ye, therefore the Lord of 
 the harvest, that He would send forth laborers into 
 His harvest." 
 
PRAYER FOR VOCATION 151 
 
 Every one who intelligently prays in the Lord's 
 Prayer " Thy Kingdom come," does pray for labor- 
 ers in that kingdom. And we like to believe that 
 there is a widening area of special intercession for 
 this very thing in the private prayers of Christians. 
 If the "Students' Kecruit Movement" had done 
 nothing more than help this on, as it no doubt has, 
 silently, by leading many to include it among their 
 petitions, who had not thought of it before, it has 
 covered a great need. And could there be anything 
 more hopeful than a propaganda putting it into the 
 hearts of parents, pastors, god-parents, Sunday- 
 school workers, teachers, and all Christian workers 
 to habitually carry the earnest plea to the Lord of 
 the harvest to send laborers into the harvest. Famil- 
 iar but never outworn is the tribute to the mother 
 of one of the greatest Church leaders of thought 
 that ever lived — "If Monica had not prayed, 
 Augustine would not have preached." Boys and 
 girls, university students, could, too, themselves find 
 the clearer whisperings of the high vocation around 
 their own hearts oftentimes if they were praying 
 such things for the kingdom. For we remember 
 that there never was a wider call for consecrated 
 womanhood too to give itself wholly to the Master's 
 service and find that deep joy of ministry. And 
 once let such dynamic of private prayer develop in 
 
168 APT AND MEET 
 
 any broadcast way, and our universities might send 
 out ten recruits where they now send out one. And 
 while in the Sisterhood or Deaconess work of our 
 Church, for instance, neither of our two great 
 California universities have from all their young 
 lady graduates, so far as I know, numbered as yet 
 one, I believe the record would soon undergo a 
 change in that as in other ways. But upon united 
 prayer concentrated upon the supply of laborers 
 would come a double blessing. In it there is a 
 genuine note of Christian unity. This is one very 
 practicable matter in which the purpose of the 
 Students' Eecruit Movement to " speed the day " 
 for Christian Unity can jBnd expression. If all 
 Christian bodies could at stated times use public 
 prayer to the Lord of the harvest to supply labor- 
 ers, such common prayer would be a common note 
 of our common Christianity. Among many things 
 in which there is diversity there could be this 
 blessed unity of prayer. And just as there is the 
 recognized advantage of having a fixed day in the 
 week for worship so there would be in having, if 
 practicable, all agree upon fixed times in the year 
 for fervent intercession for the ministry. Now why 
 could we not turn to excellent twentieth century 
 use just those four periods of every year which for 
 centuries have been associated with such prayer. 
 
PRAYEE FOR VOCATION 153 
 
 known as the Ember Days. They have a flavor of 
 antiquity and are historic with hallowed associa- 
 tions, but it is not so much that as the availability of 
 the seasons to fix stated times for all Christian 
 people of our time to unite in prayer for the min- 
 istry that we are commending. They roughly 
 correspond with the four seasons, spring, summer, 
 autumn and winter. The especial days are the 
 Wednesday, Friday and Saturday after the first 
 Sunday in Lent, after Whitsunday, after the 14th 
 of September and after the 13th of December. 
 When in the last revision of the Book of Common 
 Prayer, completed as recently as 1892, the petition 
 was added, " That it may please Thee to send forth 
 laborers into Thy harvest ; we beseech Thee to hear 
 us, good Lord," it was followed by a noticeable in- 
 crease of candidates for the ministry which could 
 not but be significant to a believer in united prayer. 
 And could all our Christian bodies agree to mark 
 those weeks four times a year with an outpouring 
 of earnest pleas, each in their own language, for 
 laborers in the wide harvest-field of the unifying 
 world, everywhere so rapidly opening itself to the 
 workers, they would be acting on Christ's charge, 
 they would be resorting to Christ's method of re- 
 plenishment of the ministry. 
 
 A prayer is appended by way of suggestion : 
 
154 APT AND MEET 
 
 A Prayer for Wider Vocation to the 
 Ministry 
 
 O Lord Jesus Christ, Head of the Church, 
 Thou that knowest the hearts of all men, show 
 through the power of the Holy Spirit, we beseech 
 Thee, all whom Thou dost call to Thy Sacred Min- 
 istry a true sense of their vocation. Quicken many 
 of our youth with that inward motion of the Holy 
 Ghost to take upon them holy offices and ministra- 
 tions to serve Thee for the promoting of Thy glory 
 and the edifying of Thy people. Impart to clergy 
 and parents and sponsors and teachers a deeper 
 realization of our responsibility for the fewness of 
 the laborers while the harvest is so plenteous. 
 Send forth laborers into Thy harvest. Increase 
 in Thy Church a faithful ministry watching for 
 the souls Thou hast redeemed with Thy precious 
 blood, as they that must give account, that they 
 may do it with joy and not with grief. All this 
 we ask of Thee, O blessed Jesus, who art with 
 the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world 
 without end. Amen. 
 
zx 
 
 MATEICULATION ADDEESS 
 
 To matriculate is to make formal the tacit 
 understanding with which one enters into an in- 
 stitution of learning. It is a simple ceremony, with 
 the best traditions of ancient and modern seats of 
 scholarship. It may help much, or little, as its 
 significance is or is not appreciated by those who 
 use it. It may belong to the mere " deadwood " 
 of an institution, withered and dried out of all 
 recognition as part of the institution's life. Or it 
 may bring forth much fruit. Naturally, in a new 
 institution, which scrutinizes while it values tradi- 
 tions, the question arises, is there any real use which 
 a form of matriculation serves in our Divinity 
 Schools ? Though observed by most of our leading 
 seminaries of theology, that is hardly reason enough 
 for our adopting it unless it has proved to be of 
 notable and enduring value to them. Feebly as we 
 may be able to copy their excellences, we should 
 certainly be wary at least not to copy their 
 surplusage of machinery if such there be. We 
 waited here to get light on that very question, 
 
 155 
 
156 APT AND MEET 
 
 waited for some development and definition of 
 what our institutional life was to be, and hold 
 this matriculation because we are convinced that it 
 may be made instinct with meaning in its bearing 
 upon all that constitutes the Divinity School a 
 mater — as the word matriculation implies — and in 
 that term, which grows fonder with the after years, 
 an alma mater. 
 
 The three afl&rmations of our form of matric- 
 ulation simply point and emphasize phases of 
 Divinity School life, which call for special concern 
 in that growth in character, which no canonical 
 schedule of topics can list, and no canonical examina- 
 tion can bring to account. And unless a Divinity 
 School is directly and effectually concerning itself 
 with that growth in character it is missing a main 
 point of its existence. The candidate that goes up 
 to his ordination must be " apt and meet " for his 
 " godly conversation " as well as for his " learning," 
 and woe betide the candidate, or the candidate's 
 Divinity School, that relegates this to even a 
 secondary place ! 
 
 Furthermore, we should not allow ourselves to 
 forget here, that in these earlier formative years of 
 our school life — as it is in these formative years for 
 the ministry of each one of you — much, very much 
 depends upon the standard we set for ourselves. 
 
MATRICULATION ADDRESS 157 
 
 The molten life running freely and glowingly as it 
 is, is running, we must remember, into the fixed 
 outlines of the mould. 
 
 The first affirmation you are to make touches 
 spirituality. This is the critical time for your 
 devotional habits. You are here because you have 
 had one demonstration of the Holy Spirit. He has 
 inwardly moved you to seek the holy ministry. 
 Other demonstration there should be, just as positive, 
 in the sanctification of character through "the 
 heavenly assistance" of the same Holy Spirit. 
 Tour rooms more than your recitations are telling 
 the story as to that, your still communings with 
 your own hearts, your assimilation of the truth of 
 God to your own spirits, your personal struggles 
 and victories over sin. Whether or not your future 
 flocks can take knowledge of you that you ha/oe 
 leen with Jesus here as well as with your text-books 
 depends upon the conscience you put into keeping 
 to some rule of devotional life for yourselves in all 
 that curriculum of the spirit into which the course 
 of the Divinity School can only enter with general 
 suggestions like this. 
 
 The second affirmation bears upon the fraternal 
 spirit to one another. Many wretched bickerings 
 and alienations would be avoided in the minis- 
 try if candidates in our Divinity Schools trained 
 
168 APT AND MEET 
 
 themselves more thoroughly and intelligently in 
 what Mozly, in one of his striking sermons, deals 
 with as a duty to our equals. There must be, of 
 course, natural groupings on lines of friendship and 
 taste, but what, as candidates for the ministry of 
 Christ, you need to be especially solicitous about is 
 to cultivate the Christlike bearing to those to 
 whom you are not drawn by natural affinity, per- 
 sonally or theologically. The other is but the 
 mark of the natural mind ; this is the mark of the 
 spiritual mind. It is not an easy thing, and I do 
 not speak of it here because I think our standard is 
 lower than elsewhere in this respect, but because I 
 believe general elevation of standard is needed in 
 this very matter, and if you school yourselves in it 
 here it will save you many a littleness out in the 
 ministry where odium theologicum has passed into 
 a proverb of the scoffer. 
 
 Then, in the third place, you promise to be loyal 
 to your Divinity School. It is good to have an 
 ideal of loyalty to it as you would have to your 
 home ; not to gossip about its home affairs, but to 
 remember that while there is nothing to conceal, 
 there is much that belongs to the amour projpre of 
 the family circle and should not be thoughtlessly 
 or frivolously introduced into general conversation. 
 Episodes of the lecture-rooms, personal comment, 
 
MATRICULATION ADDRESS 159 
 
 were better kept to the student body itself, as a 
 general custom, and it can readily become the tra- 
 dition if there be care and caution. 
 
 And as our prescript rules are to be made as 
 few as possible, there is the greater need of that 
 spirit of loyalty which can be depended upon to do 
 the right thing between the rules, to have the mind 
 and will to save rules hy being self-regulated. 
 There is an almost absurd anomaly in a candidate 
 for Orders being disorderly in any way. 
 
 And before I conclude I cannot but forecast a 
 little, to bespeak from you that loyalty which this 
 matriculation contemplates, when you have passed 
 from this institution out into your active ministry. 
 There should be the loyalty of your prayers, and if 
 possible, of your gifts ; the loyalty of your influence 
 to bring other candidates and endowments and of 
 being alert to improve opportunities to upbuild and 
 carry on the work. There is nothing in this to 
 stay your loving and honest criticisms, if loyalty 
 ever seems to suggest that, nor to deprive the 
 School of the shaping influences which may to its 
 advantage come to it as the years go by from its 
 graduates ; but may we be saved from that carping, 
 grumbling, disparaging treatment which so wounds 
 our institutions when it comes from the house of 
 their indifferent— far from loyal— alumni ! 
 
160 APT AND MEET 
 
 Believing then that you take this step fully 
 awake to its possibilities for your welfare and the 
 welfare of the Divinity School and with a high 
 purpose, to which the appeal has not yet been made 
 in vain, to partake of its spirit as well as subscribe 
 to its letter, I proceed to the matriculation itself : 
 
 FoEM OF Mateiculation 
 
 The Dean : The Church expects all her candi- 
 dates for Holy Orders to so apply and prepare 
 themselves that they may be found apt and meet 
 for their learning and Godly conversation to exer- 
 cise their ministry duly to the honor of God and 
 the edifying of His Church. Will you faithfully 
 use this Church Divinity School of the Pacific to 
 that end, giving yourself wholly to the work therein 
 set before you and daily endeavoring by some rule 
 of a devotional life to cultivate those fruits of the 
 Holy Spirit by which the true minister of Christ is 
 best known ? 
 
 Answer : I will. 
 
 The Deem : Will you carefully foster a spirit of 
 loving kindness to all that are associated with you 
 here, endeavoring, so far as in you lieth, to realize 
 that ye are brethren called to be fellow-workers in 
 the Lord ? 
 
 Answer : I will. 
 
MATRICULATION ADDRESS 161 
 
 The Dean : Will you obey the rules and guard 
 the interests of this Church Divinity School, here 
 and elsewhere, having due regard for its discipline 
 and in all things striving loyally to further its 
 aims? 
 
 Answer : I will. 
 
 The Dean^ taking each one hy the right ham^d : I 
 do hereby receive you as a fully matriculated mem- 
 ber of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. 
 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
 the Holy Ghost. Amen. 
 

 ^v\y^^ 
 
 YB 12959 
 
 182278