OCCUPATIONAL TYPES 2Q5
In such matters especially he should beware lest he suffer the positiveness of utterance usual and permissible to him in the realm of his special knowledge to give a tone of offensive dogmatism to his statements. His deliverances on such questions are especially likely to be called in question ; and errors of fact or half-baked opinions stated with dog matic cocksureness will discredit him in the eyes of all in telligent people, and weaken the force of the genuine truth which he proclaims. Often he should make reference to such matters and he should by no means be timid and nerve less in doing it; but let him lay aside his dogmatism, and above all his intolerance, when he is called upon to discuss such questions, and let him be sure of his facts, and patient and fair and cautious in presenting them.
In a word, the preacher should strenuously strive against the habit of dogmatism which, by reason of the character of his message and the conditions under which he usually speaks, is so likely to grow upon him. If he should always be positive, sometimes dogmatic and, on rare occasions, even intolerant in utterance, let him seek sedulously never to fall into these attitudes simply through force of habit. His usual positiveness, occasional dogmatism and rare intoler ance should always be the result of careful study and thought, and of profound conviction. The mere habit of positiveness has little value ; the habit of dogmatism has less ; the habit of intolerance is always positively offensive.
(2) The tendency to a merely habitual and superficial gravity of tone and manner. The preacher is dealing almost continually with the most sacred things, the most solemn and awful realities sin, salvation, the religious meaning of life, death, eternity, God. As a minister of the gospel he is " set apart " to study and explain these solemn realities and aspects of human experience, and guide men in their relations to them. It is natural, therefore, that he should have an extraordinary sense of the solemnity of life; and this is as it should be. The minister who is deficient in the conscious realization of the deeper issues of life is unfit to
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