"MINISTRY YIELDS SOLID ENDURING SATISFACTIONS"

The attention of all Harvard men is earnestly called to the important conference to be held this evening at seven o'clock at Phillips Brooks House to consider the claims of the Christian Ministry upon college men. The fact that Dr. Fosdick is to address this meeting insures an opportunity that should not be missed.

Industry Today Needs Golden Rule

There never was a time when the Christian Ministry has made a stronger appeal to college men than it makes now. Religion is admitted to be our greatest need. A well-known financier lately declared it to be the foundation of that general confidence on which rests the stability of finance. A prominent business man a few days ago said publicly that what business most needs today is the infusion of the religious spirit. Industry today needs nothing so much as it needs the Golden Rule. And there is no corrective to lawlessness and social disorder to equal the sanctions of religion. Therefore when a man undertakes to be a teacher of religion, he is assuming a task that is fundamental to the welfare of our modern world.

No man should undertake the work of the ministry who has not rugged health. Its demands are continuous and exacting. Again, no man should enter upon this work without thorough intellectual equipment. He needs to master thoroughly the materials with which he must do his work. No man should enter the ministry who is not more interested in people than in anything else. For all his time is taken up in dealing with human values. Finally, only a deep sense of consecration to his task will take him triumphantly through its undoubted difficulties. But with this four-fold equipment there is no work which yields such deep and abiding contentment.

Men Can Speak Own Minds

Some men are deterred from entering the ministry for fear that they cannot speak their minds out. That is a profound error. All that one needs is the saving grace of common sense, and he can say what he pleases. Some feel that the Church makes too much of theology. On the contrary it probably makes too little of it. A plain and positive teaching on the essentials of the Christian faith is what men are loking for and need. Others feel that the ministry does not offer them a fair and solid living. It is true that its returns at this point are meager, but it is also true that a new conscience in the Church is preparing for the adequate support of its ministry.

Its real returns, however, lie in other directions. It is an inestimable privilege to be able to talk to people week after week on the most important and insistent interests of life. And it is an increasing satisfaction to know about the problems which beset all ranges of human experience and to touch life form every angle at every period of its development. For one who has once known the joys of the Christian ministry, there is no other form of human activity that can be compared with it in the extent of its influence or in the solid and enduring satisfactions that it yields.

Originally Educated Ministers

Harvard College was originally founded to provide an educated ministry for the New England colonies. And Harvard College can render no larger service to day than by providing men who shall teach the fundamental truths of religion in our modern world.