Reasonable expectations of God's ministers.
"The priest's lips should keel knowledge." The ideal priest is here characterized, not by ceremonial exactitude, but by moral integrity. Sacrificing is not so essential as religious knowledge, sound learning, and wholesome teaching. The proper expectation of God's ministers is that they will tell God's will to the people, not only because they know it, but even more because they keep it. In our religious teachers we look for adequacy of knowledge, and adequacy of experience.
I. ADEQUACY OF KNOWLEDGE. In some countries, and in some ages, the sacred ministry has been the chief source of secular knowledge for the people. That is not the case now, and in civilized countries. But still God's ministers need to be abreast, and to keep abreast, of all that is thought and known in their day, because to them is entrusted the work of conserving the Divine element in all knowledge, and the Divine relation to everything discovered. Unless ministers have adequate knowledge, they occupy a lower plane than the secular teachers, and fail to influence the higher range of students with Divine claims, truths, and principles. To put it in another way—The ministry must be on the level of the people if it is to sympathize with them; but the ministry must be in intelligence and knowledge above the people, if it is to lift the people to higher things, Two points may be illustrated.
1. The ministers should gain knowledge as men can gain it.
2. The ministers should gain knowledge as spiritual men only can gain it. It is that spiritually acquired knowledge that is the minister's true efficiency; and more especially that spiritual knowledge as it relates to the mysteries of the sacred Word.
II. ADEQUACY OF EXPERIENCE. There is book knowledge, and there is experimental knowledge. It may be argued that for the common, everyday relations and duties of life, experience is a more valuable and practical teacher than books can be. It is certainly true that, for the ministry, experience is the essential thing. A man can only speak with power when "he has tasted and handled and felt the good word of life." The people have confidence in the teacher who has been taught of God in the discipline of life. What needs to be pointed out is that these two adequacies are not antagonistic, In their harmonious culture lies the true power.—R.T.