B 05 - A Permanent Calling

A PERMANENT CALLING 5. The ministry is a permanent calling.

Some kinds of work are temporary in their nature and, having fulfilled their use, pass away. Munition makers reaped a golden harvest during the War, but when the War stopped their work stopped with it. In choosing a calling young men would do well to consider this point of permanency. If they fit themselves for a kind of work that will presently cease to be in demand, they will be out of employment and be left with a kind of skill which has cost them much preparation but for which they can find no use. The ministry is permanent by its nature.

It is rooted down in the religious nature of man, and this is as constitutional and in eradicable and abiding as his mental and physical nature and needs. The work of the priest is one of the oldest callings in the world, being more ancient and universal than raising food and weaving cloth for clothes; and there is no sign of its becoming obsolete in our modern world through a decline in the demand for it and the passing of its market.

Men always have had and always will have religious needs which they will demand shall be supplied; and the prophet is the man that can meet this necessity. Never was there a greater need and a more urgent demand for a competent ministry that can satisfy the religious needs of men than there is to-day.

Young men that are thinking of preparing for this service need not fear that if they enter it they will find that they have chosen a narrowing field and vanishing profession. The matter of the particular field is not now being considered, but the general need of the ministry is rooted in the essential nature of man and will last as long as man himself lasts in this world.