Jesse Edward Moorland

“ The broad training these men had gave them the mastery of difficult problems. When we shall have a large number of thoroughly trained men of unquestioned character whose hearts are warm with the love of God and whose eyes behold the true condition of their people, and whose hands shall be ready to work for the good of an inspiring race, then we shall see the kingdom of God come among men in a larger way than it is possible for us now even to imagine. ”

“ It is no hard thing to see how true it is that of all men throughout the history of the world, none have had greater influence than the religious teachers of a people, and it is just as true to-day, and it is a waste of time to argue that a race or nation can be lifted any higher than the religious principles of that race or nation will allow it to go. ”

“ I have been as one crying in the wilderness, sounding the alarm, calling attention to our most vital need, to a problem which is worrying our best men. I plead with Christian parents to lay their promising sons on the Master’s altar, and to the Church and college I cry awake! and behold ruin of home and country if you fail to lead many of the ablest and best of those under you into the Master’s service. ”

“ You have only to go to a community where there is a well-trained, honorable, upright, and efficient minister to see the marked improvement among the people along every line. On the other hand, when you find a community where there is an immoral, ignorant minister, wielding a large influence, you will find a community that is full of despair. ”

“ The recent past has changed a nation in a day, and while the people have taken on the ways of western civilization, the larger number of them have not accepted the principles which have made western civilization great, and these far-seeing prophets of the Sunrise kingdom well understand that their glory will be ephemeral unless they are able to plant their feet firmly upon the eternal Rock of Ages. As lightly as it may be regarded, there is a similar danger confronting the rising young race of colored men in this land. ”

“ It is unfortunate that many of our ministers have had no systematic training at all, and it is surprising that so much has been accomplished with such poorly equipped men as many of them have been. They are not to be too severely censured. Again I repeat, no band of men in our race has been more self-sacrificing and more desirous on the whole for race uplift and development than these men, and there is no intention at this time to do anything more than to call attention to the great need of a better trained ministry to reenforce the present ranks in an effective way for good. ”

“ Greater care will be taken of the poor and orphans and more energy will be spent in building up the moral life of the young men and women of the community. This will be done by these trained men who will come fully as well equipped to discern what these problems of society are as the physician who comes to heal our bodies and who must necessarily understand disease and remedy. Such a minister’s thought will not be centered on making a great name for himself at the expense of an ignorant people. ”

“ This will do for the minister what our medical schools are doing for the physician; it will bring him in daily contact with the conditions which he must meet out in the world. Who would think of running a medical school without a laboratory and a clinic? Young men might know all the books have to say about the property of drugs or the symptoms of diseases, but such men will be handicapped if they are to wait until they go out into actual life before seeing these drugs tried, or the peculiar manifestation of diseases as they make their inroads on the human system. ”

“ The story of the lives of these men reads like romance, and they were the men at the close of the Civil War, who were ready to welcome the school and did their best to lead the people into the ways of true progress. They had great power and influence,—not always sufficient intelligence for their arduous tasks, but they were giants in their day and deserve well-merited praise. ”

“ He will be a leader in devising ways and means to get our people out of the crowded alleys into the bright sunshine of life that they may be where their little children may have a chance for true development. ”

“ Sad to say, very few of the most capable men in our colleges to-day are looking forward to the ministry as a life work.
In order that we may cope with such conditions as those just mentioned, none can gainsay the great need of greater efficiency in the ministry, that we do not cut the tap-root of all our progress and become of none effect in the world. The wisest leaders of Japan to-day are deeply concerned about the propagation of Christian principles among the people. ”

“ It is a harmful thing to have a church full of inefficient, licensed preachers with no hope of ever entering actively into the ministry, but in most cases are just a worry of the flesh to a progressive pastor. When a man comes before a board for a license he ought to be given to understand that this license will be granted only on condition that he prepare himself intellectually as well as spiritually for the great work of the ministry, and when prepared that he will enter into the field which is white and ready and waiting for the reaper. ”

“ All the people demand of such a teacher is that he should be as good as the doctrine he proclaims and should fully comprehend what he is about. There certainly is no place where larger opportunity is offered for service than in the high calling of the ministry. The average course of study in seminaries provided for both white and colored candidates for the ministry is not calculated to bring them in touch with the problems which are to confront them as it should. ”

“ Mott takes up this whole question of the supply of leaders in our churches. Though a layman himself, for some years, he has been lecturing in the leading colleges of our land and calling the strong men (as only a true leader can call men) to consider the calling of the ministry, facing squarely all of the difficulties connected therewith, problems of faith, problems of training, and the problem of support, which is entirely too meagre to-day; but with a strong purpose he has been making an effort to lead some of the best and ablest men into this, the highest of all callings. ”

“ The Christian lawyer or physician is called of God as truly as a minister. Such men are putting the emphasis on service and not on getting. The condition confronting us is alarming and this warrants the earnest plea in this paper for a greater number of efficient ministers.
This is probably the most important question confronting the colored people to-day. After all, a race or a nation is measured by its religion, and the greatest fact about a people is its religion. The efficiency of a nation depends in a large degree upon the character of its religious principles. ”

“ The smaller denominations are confronted with a similar lack of men to pioneer the enterprises which are theirs to do. The Master’s words are as true to-day as ever they were: “The harvest is great, but the laborers are few.” The pastors of training and vision are themselves alarmed; the best of the laity are overwhelmed with the magnitude of their task when it is theirs to call a pastor. There was a time when the most choice men of the race entered the ministry. No other door was open, but to-day practically every door open to anybody else is open to the man of ability of the Negro race. ”

“ Merely to have men enter this great work without a training, which fits them to cope with the problems of the day, is but a waste of effort. The Negro minister ought to be the best trained man among us in order that he may be able to assume his rightful place as a leader of the people. The training needed for the ministry of to-day must be comprehensive and practical. This will be the means of attracting [Pg 9] men of ability and will insure increased efficiency. The emphasis for the training of the ministry to-day needs to be placed upon teaching ”

“ Such men will as carefully consider the financial strength of their people as a physician considers the physical strength of a patient; and no more should we see churches built which are out of all proportion to the financial ability of the people who worship in them. We should not see a great debt hanging over the heads of a poor people, the most of whom do not own their own homes but live in narrow streets and alleys under very unsanitary conditions. ”

“ In some cases well-meaning men have been disgusted with certain types of ministers which they have met and have cast the whole profession aside, giving it no respectful consideration, and have felt that they could better themselves, socially as well as materially, by entering some profession other than the ministry. I am well acquainted with not a few men who entered college with the express purpose of preparing themselves to enter the ministry, who turned aside to some other calling for the reason mentioned. ”

“ These people are too often as sheep without a shepherd. No doubt not many of the shepherds there are doing the best they can. Give them credit for all they do, but the demand is such that a more efficient ministry must enter into every hamlet, and there lift and inspire the people; and possibly the greatest thing to be done in this lifting process is to provide a more efficient and practical training for the men we desire to lead into the ministry. ”

“ The disproportion is too great in our professional schools. For example, when a medical school can boast of four hundred young men preparing to care for the physical life of the people and the theological school in the same institution can report barely one hundred men preparing to care for the moral and spiritual life of the same people, it is time to stop and consider whither are we tending. ”

“ It is because the training in our colleges, the teaching from the platform, and the training in most of our homes is such that our boys to-day are led to believe that the route to greatest success is along the material highway. It is a current saying now that the quickest way for a colored man of ability, at this time, to get out of the reach of immediate want, materially, is to study medicine. There may not be too many men entering medicine, but certainly not enough are entering the ministry. ”

“ Some churches have done nobly at this and have stood by their spiritual sons by furnishing the means by which they might attend college and fit themselves for service, and have taken peculiar interest and pride in seeing them return to the mother church and in listening to them, and in bidding them God speed; but most of our churches, though able, have paid hardly any attention to this important phase of service at all, and many of our churches cannot mention a single successful minister who commands the respect of any large community because of his ability and power, which they have sent out. ”

“ To meet the demands of these modern times other giants must be raised up, who can hold the respect of the best trained portion of our people, and at the same time may maintain the confidence of the most humble of every community. ”

“ When we can show the great army of college men that they can be natural men, real men, with natural voice and methods, in the ministry, when they can be made to understand that it is the man under the garb and not the garb which designates the real minister to men, and that they have a chance and a right to go everywhere, finding out the conditions of society, touching it at its highest and at its lowest level, and that they will be supported in their work, morally and materially, there will be a larger supply than we have to-day, if not sufficient to meet the [Pg 14] demands of the times. ”

“ The swing away from Puritanism to what is called liberty has the effect of loosening many of the well-fixed principles of morality and right-living, and makes splendid soil for just such practices as we are constantly reminded of by the glaring headlines in our newspapers giving every detail of murders, and lax family relations and divorces, and every conceivable thing that human nature can devise for the uprooting of many of the essentials of real progress and decent living. ”

“ The minister who is to be His true representative on earth must also be a teacher, and it is of the greatest importance that his training be such as shall broaden his views of life and shall enable him to understand the relations of human society sufficiently well to warrant his instructing the people in the most helpful way. ”

“ Man is bound by his religion. He may not profess it, but he has a belief; even though he may declare that he believes nothing, the very fact of his declaration proves him to have a dogma. You had as well expect to find lions without courage as to find men without some form of religious conviction. ”

“ These parents and children read the daily papers, read the magazines, buy some books, and are beginning to think, and as soon as an individual begins to think independently all sorts of problems rapidly crowd in on the mind and put it in an attitude of questioning many of the things which have always beforehand been taken for granted as correct and true. Along with this goes the fact that much of the literature of to-day, (including newspaper editorials and many magazine articles) , has a tendency to undermine Christian faith rather than help it. ”