Excerpt from The Biblical World, Vol. 47 Are ministers ashamed of the ministry P Sometimes it would seem as though they were. We are often told that a minister's influence depends on himself as a manly man, that the authority of his calling is past, that a good mixer is more needed than a prophet. There is some truth in these statements, but more error. The ministry as a calling is still respected. When an ordinary man mounts the pulpit, his position is out of the ordinary. A little man in the pulpit often has great influence. Men who have no particular respect for his mental ability, his financial standing, his good looks, or his knowledge of literature, take him seriously because he is a minister. Go into any town or any city, and you will find that men often respect the ministry more than they respect the ministers. Of course there are men in the ministry who are little more than social chaplains co-operatively sustained. They are bits of social rococo plastered on a community by a salary. But even these poor souls get significance because they are in the ministry. Without it they might have been physical instead of spiritual valets, mani curing men's finger nails instead of their morals. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.