Contents of this PAGE. Its aim is to furnish a Review of our College Literature, a faithful representa- tion of our College Life, and a medium for the communication to the Alumni The "Alumniana" is under the charge of Prof. NORTH, a guarantee of its worth and interest. The "LIT." is furnished at exactly cost price; and, to save the Editors financial loss, must meet with the cordial support of the Alumni. I "WHAT SHALL THE GRADUATE DO?" SERIES. ARTICLE VI. THE MINISTER. FEEL as if called to "make my case ", before a jury. I am exceedingly anxious to "convince" you, young men, that the life of the minister is the life for you. The church is greatly in need of men: no "overcrowding" in this profession. Now do not imagine that I am about to array before you a series of theoretical reasons for becoming a minister. I propose to give you facts, discovered in my seventeen years of experience. My experience has made me an optimist respecting everything in the minister's life. If you find yourself at all suspicious of the "rose color and gold" of this plea, take my word for it, they have been transmuted into bona fide facts of life. To me the ministry has been altogether beautiful and good. Perhaps I ought to mention just here one fact which is often regarded as a serious bar at the very entrance to the minister's life. He must give up all hopes of becoming a rich man. This is true. Over the doorway is written, "Abandon hope of riches, ye who enter here." To be sure you may slip in "some other way" by following the advice of Tennyson's old farmer, "Doant marry for money, But goa where money is." However, the square, man-fashion is to walk up to that doorway, read the inscription, and then like Bunyan's soldier, say to the scribe sitting there, "Set down my name, sir," then draw the sword of the Spirit and clear your way into the palace, where you are greeted by celestial voices, singing 'Come in, come in, Eternal glory thou shalt win." He is rich who feels rich; he is poor who feels poor. I know a young man who has hardly touched middle life, who has a fine position, a salary not much below that of the president of the United States, and large legacies threatening both sides of the family, yet he whimpers daily about the poorhouse! He is poor. So if you enter the ministry with a buoyant, manly spirit, a serene trust in your Heavenly Father, and eye and heart for all the holiest and best things in life, you will be a rich man; and the joy of it is, your riches will not fluctuate with the market. They will multiply and compound themselves at the highest rate. The man who has "life in himself" is happily released from bondage to outer things. He is never compelled to say to houses and lands and bank stock, "by your leave;" "your most obedient servant." I have never known a church that did not believe, and provide accordingly, that its minister should live as well as the average of its members. This is all that any self-respecting man can ask. 99.66 Much has been said and written about the exactions of churches. My experience has made no discoveries in that line. I have been pastor of two churches, the Old South Congregational Church, in Augusta, Me., and the 2nd Presbyterian Church, of Albany, N. Y. My ministerial life of seventeen years has been about equally divided between the two churches. Never once has either of them exacted a service of me, or even remotely suggested dictation as to my duties. Their call was not to service, but to leadership. We ask you to become "our pastor and teacher." Both of them have loyally and lovingly kept the letter and the spirit of their call. The only dictation I have ever known has been just such as a loving mother is wont to give, "Don't over work." "Let some things go." of rest." "Run off for a few days Your This, by the way, I trust you will note, young men. every call is to leadership among men. To have, Sunday after Sunday, a congregation of serious, intelligent men and women assemble in the house of God, and turn their faces toward you for guidance and inspiration in the highest things that can challenge the human intellect and spirit, is a mission worthy of an angel. Blessed, thrice blessed, is the man, who humbly, devoutly, courageously accepts such a call. It is a call from God. It is a call re-echoed and sanctioned by the most profound and reverent convictions and sentiments among men. You must likewise remember, young men, that in the ministry, your entire life lies on the spiritual side of life. You are called to live in the most congenial, delightful climate known to the mind and heart of man. Business doubtless has its rewards; but many of its details lie down very close to the earth, dress goods, breadstuffs, leather, pig iron, salt, fish, flesh. The man who proposes to succeed in business must get down among these things. The lawyer meets men largely on the Shylock side of life. I'll have my pound of flesh even if it does take heart's blood. The physician lives in an atmosphere of perpetual sighs and groans. He studies the human anatomy, not as the Greek sculptor, to discover its beauty and strength and proportion, but to map out all possible complications, and learn the hiding places of pain, the secret burrows of deadly humors. What keeps the conscientious, sensitive physician from the mad-house is beyond my comprehension. But the minister meets men on the heights and uplands of life. He meets them when they have put off the earthliness and soil of life with their work clothes, and have put on thought, and feeling, and aspiration, and reverence, with their "Sunday clothes." They say to him, now speak to us of the great things of the spirit; touch our eyes that we may see the "land that is very far off;" lead us to the "throne of God and of the Lamb." In his daily mission from house to house, he sees the family not on the side of its silly social ambitions, or of its sinister struggles |