C 14 - Great and Fine Rewards

GREAT AND FINE REWARDS

14. Finally, the ministry has the attraction of great and fine rewards. There are two kinds of reward in life, external and internal. External rewards, such as wages and wealth, are the end product and remuneration of service and stand apart from the service itself. Men are usually most eager for these material rewards, and the division of them is one of the great causes of com petition and strife among them. The minister receives a modest share of these material goods. But there is another kind of reward that is much richer and nobler. This is the inherent reward that grows right out of the service itself. Work which is congenial and delightful is its own reward. This is eminently true of artistic work. The sculptor’s chisel and the painter’s brush, the poet’s flights of imagination and the musician’s song these forms of activity may be intense toil and cost sweat and even the agony of the soul, but they are also the soul’s finest satisfaction and fullest joy. These activities are not weights that load and drag the soul down into slavery, but wings that set it free in glorious liberty. Such work is not drudgery but delight, and in such service duty and de sire coincide and make one music. These inherent joys are ever the highest and richest rewards of service.

All men, even those that are primarily working for external, material rewards, may in some degree attain to this reward and joy inherent in their work. Not only the business man or the professional man may have such interest in his work that it becomes its own satisfaction and delight, but even the common laborer at the humblest and hardest physical toil may learn to love his work and strive to do it better for its own sake; and this process of humanizing the common labor and all the work of the world and opening the eyes of men so that they will see its inherent dignity and worth and reward is the line along which we must hope and work for the improvement of the condition and the contentment of the industrial toilers.

Now the minister is engaged in work that carries its reward in its own bosom. All the attractions of the ministry that have been considered, with the single exception of the salary, are of this nature. Its social position and intellectual life and teaching and speaking activities and soul-winning and building the brotherhood of the Church and community service and establishing the world-wide Kingdom and its leadership and heroism and coworking with God and Christ, are rewards and joys in themselves. They pay their own way at every step. The minister does not need to wait till the end of the day’s work or of the month’s service to receive his real pay: his work is his wage. In a supreme degree he has the wage and joy “of going on.” Like the artist working in marble or paint or poetry or music he is carving souls and painting portraits of human character and expressing the poetry of life and helping to set “This inharmonious world in tune and cause Our jarring lives to grow to mellow music.” His soul takes flight on these wings and rises above drudgery into liberty. Often his duty and his desire and his delight coincide and flow in one smooth channel; he does just what he wants to do and he wants to do just what he ought to do, and this is life without friction or fret and is the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Of course this ideal is not always or constantly realized. The minister, like other men, has his days of disillusionment and discouragement bordering at times on despair; many are his trials; but through them all and in spite of thorn all he is living the life he has chosen and would choose above any other life, and is ordinarily happy in it and at times rises into the victorious life. He realizes in a peculiar degree the gospel of cheer and the promises of blessing that he preaches, and would not exchange the grace of God in his calling for all the gold in the world. The great preachers have gloried in the rewards of the ministry and in its very trials and crosses. The Hebrew prophets were men of great disappointments and sorrows, but they caught golden visions and lived lives of triumphant faith and joy. Paul rejoiced in his calling amidst all his unparalleled sufferings, and when the grace of God struck the thorn in his flesh it blazed up in glory as the electric current when it encounters the resistance of the filament in the lamp flashes into light. The supreme example of reward and joy in the ministry is the Master himself, who, notwithstanding all his sorrows, was anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, the happiest man and most jubilant optimist that ever lived; and “Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame.” The glorious company of the apostles and martyrs, who counted not their lives dear, rejoiced in their sufferings and would not have exchanged the martyr’s flames that enveloped them for purple robes or jeweled crowns. The minister belongs to this company and has his share of these inherent re wards and joys. He also sees of the travail of his soul and is satisfied. This is a reward that is independent of wages and position and all the vicissitudes of the world and is within his soul a well of water springing up into pure and fresh life. He ever carries his reward with him, he reaps as he sows, his work is his constant wage. At the end of his day’s work comes his final reward, when he can exclaim with Paul, I i I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved his appearing. 7

These manifold and various aspects of the Christian ministry present only its attractions and magnify its office, for this is our present purpose. No doubt other aspects can be presented and even painted in dark colors, though these have not been wholly overlooked in this study. The ministry is subject to the ordinary disappointments and trials of life and also has vexations and battles of its own. The minister’s crown is attended with a cross, and there are plenty of thorns concealed in the roses in his garden. We have no disposition to deny or minimize this aspect of this calling. They furnish occasions when the minister is to exercise his faith and patience and bravery and heroism, and without such trials and tests he could scarcely be a strong and virile man. The battle field is the correlative of the soldier’s calling* and courage, and it is so with the good soldier of Jesus Christ. He expects the march and trench and firing line and the leap over the top. He asks for no soft life and flowery beds of ease, but girds himself up for service and genuine sacrifice, if needs be even unto death. But when the account is cast up the at tractions of the ministry overwhelmingly out weigh its trials, and it makes a superb appeal to strong young men with faith in their hearts and courage in their souls to enlist in this service.