TOO HIGHLY SPECIALIZED.
By C. M. S.
In justifying himself, or attempting to do so, for using profane language at a club dinner, a New York clergyman recently declared that the clergy were “too highly specialized nowadays—so highly that a glass of wine or a cigar is denied them.” It is difficult to imagine the true ambassador of Christ bemoaning the fact that he must leave the world and the things of it in his following of the Master. It is hard to understand how that one who had been crucified with Christ could still be commiserating himself over the loss of those things which minister to the carnal nature. Paul declares, “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” Gal 5:24. And again, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Gal. 2:20. How different from the attitude of such a clergyman is the attitude of the true child of God as expressed in Rom. 8:35-39: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors thru Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Alongside of this manly, straight-forward Christian character, how weak, how purposeless, how worthless, is the character of one who whimpers when he can not indulge a depraved appetite, who bemoans the temperance which a Christian must practise, and who thinks the clergy are “too highly specialized” when required to be ensamples to the flock. The trouble is that many have adopted the “profession of the pulpit” as they would any other profession or business, and desire the pleasures of the world while carrying it on. It is a thing with which to get a living. The parish is their plot of ground, and shekels are the harvest; while temperance, abstemiousness, godliness, are the “drawbacks” of their occupation. “Verily, they have their reward.” It is their salary. God has no use for such a shepherd. He who would rather lay down his life than be separated from the love of Christ will not be found weeping over the loss of liquor and cigars. It was things of much greater consequence than these that Paul declared he would call less than nothing in order that he “might win Christ.” Phil. 3:8. He would forget those things which were behind and eagerly “press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” O, for Christian manliness in this warfare against sin—and for Christians in the pulpit! God has them still in the earth, not as many as there should be, but He has them; and they loom up over the loiterers like sturdy oaks over a field of stubble.