The pulpit is the most sacred spot in the world. There are some who bow down to the financier's desk or the editor's chair or the professor's platform, but the masses of people in their hearts hold the pulpit as of greatest meaning to them. Let the minister enter his pulpit in full comprehension of its importance. He is to conduct the worship of God; he is to speak for God. What a responsibility! The right sort of minister will come from his study as from an altar of prayer. Solemnity, eagerness, earnestness, and a yearning for God and man will be written on his face. A true minister will be dressed or robed inconspicuously. He will not enter his pulpit smiling and bowing to his people —that is friendly but not lasting. . . . He will not make long announcements. He will be bent on creating an atmosphere of worship and eager to make God real. Nothing else matters.
The ministry is the most influential calling in the world today. The community generally looks to it with hope and expectation. Lacking the personal authority he once had, the minister now is considered, consciously or unconsciously, as a source of strength in sorrow, a moral reservoir in changing times, and a spiritual storehouse in a world of material emphasis. If the individual minister fails in gaining a hearing, he must not blame his failure upon the setting of the ministerial sun, but must take stock of his own personal inadequacies for the work.
The great task of the minister is to interpret God. In the process of that interpretation he draws upon every resource of his life—his powers of acquisition, his thought, his enthusiasm, his appearance, even his dignity. His associates think of him always as the interpreter of God. A businessman may be respected for his money, though he may have little to commend him in other ways, but the minister is respected only when he shows forth God in every aspect of his life.
