1924

I am not surprised that most prophets are itinerants. Critics of the church think we preachers are afraid to tell the truth because we are economically dependent upon the people of our church. There is something in that, but it does not quite get to the root of the matter. I certainly could easily enough get more money than I am securing now, and yet I catch myself weighing my words and gauging their possible effect upon this and that person. I think the real clue to the tameness of a preacher is the difficulty one finds in telling unpleasant truths to people whom one has learned to love.

To speak the truth in love is a difficult, and sometimes an almost impossible, achievement. If you speak the truth unqualifiedly, that is usually because your ire has been aroused or because you have no personal attachment to the object of your strictures. Once personal contact is established you are very prone to temper your wind to the shorn sheep. It is certainly difficult to be human and honest at the same time. I’m not surprised that most budding prophets are tamed in time to become harmless parish priests.

At that, I do not know what business I have carping at the good people who are doing the world’s work and who are inevitably enmeshed to a greater or less degree in the iniquities of society. Conscience, Goethe has observed, belongs to the observer rather than the doer, and it would be well for every preacher to realize that he is morally sensitive partly because he is observing and not acting. What is satisfying about the ministry is to note how far you can go in unfolding the full meaning of the Christian gospel provided you don’t present it with the implication that you have attained and are now laying it as an obligation upon others.

If the Christian adventure is made a mutual search for truth in which the preacher is merely a leader among many searchers and is conscious of the same difficulties in his own experience which he notes in others, I do not see why he cannot be a prophet without being forced into itinerancy.