Church Economics [pp. 325-338]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIEW.
the eyes of his fellow-students. In the operation of a system
of which this arrangement would be the feature, accuracy of
knowledge and thoroughness of examination would become a
necessity. Goodness of heart would not offset defective preparation; the standard of ministerial education would, to say the
least, not be lowered; and the standing of the clergy would be
raised-itself a most desirable object.
Objections to this will, of course, occur to any one familiar
and content with the existing system. It may be alleged that
the proposed plan leaves young men to get ready for college
without aid, and so works badly at the outset. But in point of
fact only a small proportion of beneficiaries receive aid before
entering college, and in law and medicine there is no want of
candidates, the standard of admission being the same to them
as to intending theological students. There is no fund of which
we know for youths who aspire to be lawyers or doctors.
It may be feared that the operation of such a plan as this
would, in the first instance, diminish the number of candidates
for the ministry, and so embarrass the churches and impede the
noblest of all work. To this it is sufficient to reply that the
change should be made gradually, and in such a way as to carry
along the intelligent sympathy of ministers, church courts, colleges, and parents disposed to encourage their sons to seek the
noblest of offices. And it is not, perhaps, too much to say that
a certain temporary reduction of the candidates for pulpits might
not be a serious evil. Congregations, in too many cases, are
demoralized on the subject of ministerial maintenance by the
number of competitors painfully within their reach, and a pressure in any direction that would force the question away from
the calculations of trustees, "On how little can he live?" would
be a clear gain.
It would involve, some may think, the creation of much new
machinery and the abandonment of some of the old. This is
not, however, necessary. Let a denomination that spends, say,
fifty thousand dollars a year on the existing plan turn in this
much money annually to its colleges and seminaries, in which all
the appliances for its custody and application already exist, and
the work is done. The agencies for raising the funds may remain unaltered, and it is not improbable that larger contributions
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