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SOME RESOURCES OF THE MODERN
PREACHER
EDWARD INCREASE BOSWORTH
Oberlin Graduate School of Theology
Christian ministers axe very conscious today of looking
out on a world that is dark and discouraging. There are,
however, fundamental reasons for expecting within the life-
time of those now preparing for the ministry unusual success
in the great work that they have undertaken. Success comes
through intelligently facing the great facts of life, and men
know more today about three of these facts than ever before.
i. We know more about what we mean by the will of God.
Our idea of what we mean by "will" comes to us from experi-
ence with our own wills. The will is the intelligent push of
a personality on its environment, the set of a personality
toward a goal. The will of God is a form of energy in the
midst of which we live, which is set toward the securing of an
honest and friendly world. It tends to rise in every individual,
claiming him for the honest and friendly life. It tends to
rise in the common life of man, to make all social institutions,
laws, and customs honest and friendly. In ways that are
sometimes gentle and sometimes rough it is crowding men up
against the necessity of working with it to make truth and
beauty, in moral relations honesty and friendliness, universal
and secure in the civilization of the world.
The minister's great and indispensable work is one of
leadership in making the masses of men, into whose hands
power is so rapidly passing, aware of the will of God, aware of
an energy near enough to them to give them being and keep
it going, distinct enough from them to give them a chance to
be themselves. Our better understanding of what we mean
174
SOME RESOURCES OF THE MODERN PREACHER 175
by the will of God enables us to show men where to look for it,
how to recognize intelligently the "feel" of it, and how to share
in its great push toward the honest and friendly world. The
Christian minister can interpret the will of God to men in
terms of that which is most real to them, the universal experi-
ences of plain daily living.
2. We know more about the nature of man than we ever
did before. We have not only the results of psychological
study but we have seen the naked nature of man uncovered
by the war. We have seen man's lust, his greed, his brutality,
and we have seen his high purpose, his idealism, his self-
sacrifice. We have seemed to see these qualities in the same
individual. We have seen "bad" men catch a glimpse of
some phase of the great vision of an honest and friendly world
and under its inspiration in the brutality of battle go stumbling
and cursing on their way into some vital accord with the will
of God.
We are seeing this same incongruous combination of the
good and bad of human nature in whole nations. During the
war the great idea of co-operation for the creation of an
honest and friendly world entered for the first time in a domi-
nant way the practical politics of the whole world. All
nations and tribes of the world felt its influence at the same
time in their practical politics. Mohammedan chieftains from
the heart of Africa and Arabs from east of the Jordan dis-
cussed President Wilson's "fourteen points" with keen inter-
est. And now this insistent idea is compelling nations and
tribes in all the world at the same time to bring all phases of
their life before its judgment seat. All things good and bad
in political, industrial, social, and international relations
must appear in bewildering confusion, and experience some
new degree of adjustment to the great idea— adjustment to
the unfolding will of God.
Here is our great chance as Christian ministers, specialists
in character, to work with new knowledge of human nature and
176 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
fresh hope of success for the moral evolution of the individual
and the race.
3. We know more than we ever did before about the religious
experience of Jesus Christ. The tendency to investigate the
life that expresses itself in literature has operated in the study
of the Christian gospels. As a result we are slowly making our
way into the presence of the religious experience of Jesus.
We begin to see the hard problems that he faced, the fierce
temptations that he resisted, the vague ideals that he made
definite and secure, the processes of moral redemption that he
wrought out in personal religious experience. He has become
for us the world's supreme leader and savior in the great push
of the will of God in the life of man toward an honest and
friendly world, because he had the supreme religious experi-
ence with the will of God; and because through the influence
of his immortal spirit he has been able to lead men into a
morally redeeming share of his own experience.
And so, although we have come to a place where the world
looks dark and discouraging, it is a place where long avenues
of growing knowledge and power converge. In this place the
Christian minister stands, with a larger chance than ever
before to contribute to the moral evolution of man.
