OCCUPATIONAL TYPES 303
that is a requirement that as a class they should be spiritual heroes. It is an ideal, but a high and difficult ideal ; and the fact is that ordinarily it is not attained. The great majority of ministers are more or less influenced if not consciously, then unconsciously by the material consid eration that they need an economic basis for their lives. They can secure this only by meeting with some measure of satisfaction the wishes of those who employ their services.
Along with this goes another consideration which, whether it be superior to the one just mentioned or not, seems at any rate to be less material, and which weighs heavily with many ministers the desire for appreciative recognition and promotion to positions of greater influence. To this also it may be felt that the man devoted to so holy a calling should be superior and that we are far from disputing. The minister s distinction and promotion should come through the very humility and unselfishness of his service. But those who urge this should consider that such humility ought not by any means to be peculiar to him. To the Christian law of promotion through self -forgetful service all the followers of Christ are subject alike. Preachers are fashioned from the common clay of humanity; and it is to bring in by the back door, so to speak, the old notion of priestcraft if they are to be regarded as belonging to a dif ferent order of beings from their fellow Christians.
It can hardly be denied that the habitual mental attitude and personal bearing of the average minister is to a con siderable extent moulded by these influences. If in these matters so important to his happiness he feels himself to be dependent upon higher ecclesiastical officials, it is useless to deny that there is a tendency for him to become sub servient, fawning, a flatterer of his superiors; if he avoids this depth of degradation, he is likely, at least, to seek, on the one hand, to avoid conflict with them ; and, on the other, to realize their specific requirements in his work. And even in the later case, his own personality is in some measure sacrificed. If in more democratically organized bodies he
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