Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1882-03-08
A Forgotten Obligation.

A large obligation sometimes puts out of
sight smaller one. There is an incidental
service rendered to society in this country
by the Christian ministry, which is more
likely to be forgotten than the obligation
due to them for their own immediate work.
Emerson has somewhere said that quiet and
studious lives are the chief corrective of a
money-making age. Now the life of min
lister can hardly be called quiet one, and it
is not always possible to the busy pastor to
lead studious life, in the general sense of
that term. And yet, the kind of life usually
led by ministers is, beyond question, the
most efficient antidote to a money-making
spirit that our society knows. The minister
is often the one man in his circle who stands
for something higher than mere getting.
We know well enough that there are divers
kinds of men in the ministry. 1t is impos-
sible that any profession should fail TO get
its share of men who fall below the stand
ard of their calling. But, speaking gener-
ally, the Christian ministry sets up light
house in each community, by giving to it a
man whose life indicates that there are
other ends of living than the gross one of
getting and keeping. "Let us not for the
sake of living lose what men should live for"
was written in Latin on the banners of one
OF the regiments that fought under Crom-
well. And this is what the life of the min
lister says to those about him "Let us not
in our haste to accumulate, forget those
things which make accumulation valuable"
For, while the ministry stands for religion
and MORALS it stands also for culture and
knowledge. The man of business has no
time, or thinks he has none (Which comes to
the same thing), to know what is going on
in the world of thought. But his minister
knows, and conversation with the minister
reminds him that there is, even here below,
a world above that world of things in which
he is 30 busy. Historical and scientific
knowledge, aud the humanizing influence of
literature, sift through the pulpit to the
people. lu the country village, the minister
is not 30 exclusively an authority as he was
in the old days, when he was usually the
only literally educated man in the town.
But he is source of intellectual eulighten-
ment; his conversation or that which is
dropped incidentally in his sermon, stirs the
mind Of some lad with curiosity Books
are mentioned Of which the boy has never
heard, and dim vistas of knowledge open up
before his eyes. The hills that stand about
the town seem too strait for him, the hum
drum of life too narrow. He, too, will
study, and will know of these things whereof
the parson speaks. And so another is pres
emily added TO the ranks of educated men,
by the contagion of culture. This is the
history of the intellectual awakening OF
many of our great men. The minister
touched them with admiration for his supe-
rior information, and they straightway got
Latin grammar and began to push at that
narrow door of knowledge. 1t is not small
matter that every Sunday thousands OF dis
courses by educated men are given in all
parts of the country. A profession that
counts many of the finest minds, and has
the attention of so large proportion of the
people, cannot help stimulating exceedingly
the intellectual life OF the nation. II we leave
out OF sight its religious work, and even it,
moral teaching, the debt we owe the ministry
for its influence on the general education OF
the peoplei is incalculable. When Frederick
Oberlin, in his half-barbarous parish in tn,
Vosges, planted schools, taught the people
to build bridges, and substituted goot
French for their miserable paf0is, he did