And in that out-of-the-way parish he played the shepherd and the man for nigh on to sixty years. Like the Venerable Bede in the eighth century, he died with the shepherd’s crook in his hand.
Preachers’ Alibis Pass Inspection
Now tell me, was Oberlin—remember he is only a hundred years away from our time—temperamental and absurdly heroic? Was the nineteenth-century wolf any less tender with the nineteenth-century flock than the first-century wolf with the first-century flock? Is the modern “world-the-flesh-and-the-devil” just a bugaboo to frighten children? Is modern sin a whiter stain on the soul and more easily washed out than in any previous century? It would take a braver man than I am to champion modern life to such lengths.
These 30,000 runaway American preachers,—they all have good reasons for running. As alibis go, they are perfect—humanly speaking. I have often heard the recital: “Easier life for the wife,” “education for the children,” “an American standard of living,” “congenial parish,” “books,” “travel,” “art,” “greater opportunity for service.”
Just such reasons as bankers, clerks, teachers, merchants give for their economic movements—to better themselves, following the law of hire. And nobody protests; for nobody is in a position to protest, as the law of hire seems to regulate the life of all. The protest—the only great protest—comes everlastingly up from the first century:
“A certain scribe came, and said unto Him, Master, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.”
The Plight of Him Who Stays
The preacher that sticks by the farm community takes pot-luck with the farmer himself; and the socio-economic plight of the farmer has had front-page head-lines since the time of President Theodore Roosevelt. To-day, in the time of President Calvin Coolidge, those head-lines have become bigger and blacker. The farmer’s dollar, meanwhile, has become small and weak. His taxes have risen overnight like a spring freshet. His debts stare him in the face. His children are forsaking him for the high wages and high life of the city. He cannot pay the wages of labor in competition with automobile factories.
The farmer’s social system in America has broken down under the strain of new forces. He needs the social help of men and women who will share his life, his privations, his hopes and fears. But they are to be men and women who see the farmer’s plight and, giving themselves to the task, struggle to organize a modern rural social system. It is fruitless here to recite the tale of an underpaid country clergy, with its sequel of a socially visionless, untrained set of honest parsons; fruitless to point out how denominational strife has cut down the preacher’s salary to less than a living wage. True, the country parson has his poverty, and needs not to take any extra “vow of poverty.” This sort of thing will go on and on until there is a right-about on the part of those preachers who flee the country as if it were the plague. Strong men of social vision, men who have come to understand the farmer’s social and economic plight, must turn their back on the city, and take up labors for the country flock.
A New Type of Training School