Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 186, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1915 — HEED CALI TO REST [ARTICLE]

HEED CALI TO REST

Vacation From the Arduous Duty of the Pulpit Is an Imperative Need. Upon the advent of the clergymen’* vacation season it is timely to call to their attention the disuse into which nature themes for pulpit employment have fallen during the past sew years. A decade ago the minister went upon his vacation prompted by that hunger and thirst after the sweet and quiet meditations of nature places_ that has always been the source of truest idealizing in pulpit deliverances. Today the field of social reform and the kinds of service that find expression in organized form and by insistent appeals, have quite supplanted the green pastures and the still waters. The Sons of Boanerges have taken the place of the shepherd singer of Israel. The interpreter of the lilies, the divine advocate of beauty in nature forms has been set aside by the wielder of the whip of small cords. The woman sweeping her house for the piece of silver has usurped the place in the pulpit of seeker after the lost sheep. Matching metal against metal, the pulpit sounds at times like a boiler factory by reason of the tapping of the hammers of denunciation upon the bessemerized materialism of the day. One feels like taking up the? longing of the psalmist for a lodge in some vast wilderness. When will the men who regard themselves as having a mission to manifest their superficial ingenuity in dealing with the passing fashions of the times give place to the men of lesser public mold but of vaster sympathies and basic intelligence, who would lead the wearied hosts of the daily battle, for bread out into the mount of refreshment where the Master is declaring that men shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. When will they turn again to the construction of the Scriptures and extol such provision as that which points to the young lions lacking and suffering hunger in contrast with the provident care of God, which gives assurance that they that trust him shall not lack any good thing. When will they lead their flocks in the shepherded ways of meditation upon the things of. nature, pointing to the cattle upon the thousand hills to declare unto the poor in this world’s goods that these are ail possessions of their heavenly father? Majestic Nature. How wonderfully placid is nature! How marvelously serene its representations, how beneficent its' changing moods; what contrast and light and uplift come from meditation upon this age-old book that has been the source of all true devotion; of all worthy idealization, of all responses to the true things of melody, of all creative faculty for art depiction, of all the true science of gracious and good living. Nature echoes the voice of its Maker, who says he will keep in perfect peace all whose minds are stayed upon him. Where will the ministers go upon their vacations? Some will go where the newer laws of social regeneration are being declared in assemblies for study and for instruction. Others willgo where the masses of men teem in the thronged places of recreation resort, in order to see how their fellows deport themselves and to observe the glaring contrasts in human conditions; yet others will go to work amid the slums of congested cities; others again will enter the libraries and pursue some favorite line of study, from which they hope to produce yet another of the panacea books of the writing of which there is no end and the reading of which brings weariness to the flesh. Getting Back to Real Things. Happy the true scholar, the real idealist, the wide-visioned pastor, the man who looks beyond the murk of the day and who sees the clear Shining of God in the smiling beauty of an orchid. Blessed that clergyman who learns new litanies from the brook and new offices from the interlaced and waving branches Of the trees; thrice blessed is that leader of a wellinstructed congregation who claims nature unsullied as his companion and who seeks in vacation absorption, garnished with a few suitable books, and perhaps a rod and line, the communion with nature that alone can bring clarification of view, enrichment of nature and serenity in all times of pressure from the little things of living. Let the clergymen get back to nature and let them bring nature back into the pulpit.