A discussion, then, dealing with this aspect of our problem, would
raise many and genuine questions for us. There is the more room for it
in this time of increasing emphasis upon machinery when even ministers
are being measured in the terms of power, speed and utility. These are
not real ends of life; real ends are unity, repose, the imaginative
and spiritual values which make for the release of self, with its
by-product of happiness. In such days, then, when the old-time
pastor-preacher is becoming as rare as the former general
practitioner; when the lines of division between speaker, educator,
expert in social hygiene, are being sharply drawn--as though new
methods insured of themselves fresh inspiration, and technical
knowledge was identical with spiritual understanding--it would be
worth while to dwell upon the culture of the pastoral office and to
show that ingenuity is not yet synonymous with insight, and that, in
our profession at least, card-catalogues cannot take the place of
the personal study of the human heart. But many discussions on this
Foundation, and recently those of Dr. Jowett, have already dealt with
this sort of analysis. Besides, today, when not merely the preacher,
but the very view of the world that produced him, is being threatened
with temporary extinction, such a theme, poetic and rewarding though
it is, becomes irrelevant and parochial.
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