We have come to the Holy of Holies of our great Convention. It is eminently fitting that this sacred hour should fall at this place in the program of the week's deliberations. Amid the days of vision with our eyes fastened upon the far reaches of the kingdom of God and our hearts thrilled by the records of achievement, we should pause to spend an hour with those whose eyes, though dimmed by many years, still rest upon that self-same vision; whose hearts, like the old instrument with chords steeped in harmony from the master hands, respond with mellow tones to the touch of the genius of a new age, but whose hands are no longer able to execute. I say it is eminently fitting that we should pause to have fellowship with those who share with us the joy and meaning of all that gathers itself up into this historic week. They share it all with us--and yet not all--all but that which is our highest joy, the privilege of giving ourselves to its future.

      Again I say it is fitting that this hour should stand here--here upon the threshold of the morrow when we shall take stock of what three generations have contributed to us. And of that contribution nothing invites our gratitude more than the larger day that opens before us. Is it a great thing that we should share their limitations who have created our opportunity? The Master gave his disciples a vision of the eternal church resisting the powers of the unseen, and then, when he would lead them into the world of service, he took them by way of the silent chamber of communion with the prophets and sages of the past. Before we descend from the mountain of prospect to take possession of the land of promise, it is fitting that we should rest in the sad, sweet, grateful hush of this silence and listen to the mingled strains of the "voice of the sower and the songs of the reaper."

      We have come to the hour of Ministerial Relief--the hour of ministering

G. B. VAN ARSDALL.

to those who minister. There gathers up into this service all that is heroic in years of devotion that counted the necessity of hardship sweet for Christ's sake. There gather up here the tenderness and love that count it hard not to have fellowship with those who suffer. Here we pour the oil of a brother's love into the wounds of the Old Guard who look eye to eye upon the end of toil and await the summons of reward. Here is a ministry the deep reaches of whose fellowship can be fathomed only by those to whom achievement is a memory, and life a reminiscence. I dare say this is the holiest ministry of life, and when we shall come to know the meaning of the tragedy of its neglect and of the joy of its fellowship, new fountains of grace will be opened out of which will flow rivers of water to refresh the dry and desolate places of a hard and unsympathetic church. In this the latest ministry of our century of achievements--in this the long-neglected privilege of a grateful people--God has reserved the best wine for the end of the feast. Another century will [251] not find this ministry a mere gleaner in the harvest-fields of the church's bounty, but the recipient of the first-fruits of a grateful and loving people.

      The memorials erected to the fathers in this Centennial year would be incomplete without some worthy place enshrined in our history to the memory of the founder of Ministerial Relief. It was my good fortune to be situated in circumstances at that time that gave me an insight into the spirit and heart of that good man of which I feel impelled by the constraint of gratitude to tell you some things. On the 30th day of January, 1895, attended by my bride, I followed the beloved Ira J. Chase down the aisle of the church to the marriage altar. A few days later he went to the far East to hold a meeting at Lubec, Me. Only a few weeks later, accompanied by the beloved A. M. Atkinson, with whom it was my privilege to minister in holy things at that time, we followed the body of that same great man down the aisles of the Central Church in Indianapolis. Though his body was cold in death, his spirit was destined through the voice of the man who walked at my side to call the Disciples of Christ to the most sacred ministry of their history. Bro. Chase had been pastor to Bro. Atkinson years before. They had tried the mettle of their souls in the fire of many a hard-fought battle. Ira Chase, as the Governor of Indiana, was then one of the most conspicuous men of our brotherhood. This, however, was not his chief prominence. A man of great heart, he was a type of the spirit of generosity characteristic of our representative ministry--a man whom God was to use to call the attention of his church to the thin line that separates her ministers from poverty. A man above the average in the positions he held, nevertheless the drain of the opportunities for giving that came to him had kept him close to the line of poverty. And yet so gladly did he walk in the shadow of want that no one could detect it until the accident of death revealed the place where he stood. Now, how quietly the sun of God's providence dispelled the clouds, disclosing the silent sufferings of a great company of the Old Guard, no one will ever know save those who sat together with Bro. Atkinson in the morning light of that new day. There was the beloved wife of Bro. Chase, who for more than a quarter of a century had walked with sightless eyes beside her husband--eyes that she had gladly given in a ministry of love during an epidemic of the Civil War. She, too, was representative of a great company who had forfeited the meager means of self-support that belonged to women, that she might keep company with her husband in a ministry that counted even life dear that was withheld from Him. It was then that Bro. Atkinson was moved by the Spirit of God to provide for Mrs. Chase. He had no other thought than her need. But he who sets himself to discharge the duty that lies near him ever finds it a door opening into opportunities obscured by neglect.

      This ministry originated where God intended it should, with a layman and not with a preacher. Before Bro. Atkinson had fully provided the fund for Mrs. Chase, he began to ask if the situation for which he was caring was unique. There might be others. He did not go fifty miles from home until he found one of our old and honored ministers, a man who had preached for more than half a century, then more than fourscore years old. Upon a chill autumn morning in the quiet of a country village, he found this man of God and his aged wife hovering over a little cook stove watching the dying embers of their last stick of wood. And, to his great surprise, he could compel from them no word of bitterness, no syllable of criticism, no murmur of discontent, no sense of loneliness. They who had suffered the lifelong loss of all things for His sake, could not now transmute their joy of sacrifice into susceptibility to pain. No one will ever know how the heart of that good man was moved with a great wave of tenderness, by the revelations of heroic suffering and privation that came to him in the opening days of this ministry. That there were hundreds of similar cases he did not doubt. But he must needs hunt for them in sequestered places. He must needs uncover want, for its victims guarded the knowledge of it as the last sweet draught from [252] the cup of sacrifice, which they would drink lest its removal might hinder a cause that was dearer to them than life. Shall we not erect here in our hearts an altar of sweet memory to the name of him who opened to us the gates into this new Gethsemane?

      This ministry was conceived by Bro. Atkinson in a profound sense of gratitude, in a clear vision of simple justice and in a great passion of fellowship in suffering. It was dedicated to the care of our ministers who, through misfortune or old age, come to a condition of need and dependence. A ministry, "so conceived and so dedicated," has in it the seed of the whole meaning of the life of God in man. When once it is seen in its true significance, its appeal to our hearts is so simple, so urgent, that argument and definition seem almost to hinder rather than to help response. When once our eyes rest upon the vision of this ministry in all its wealth of holy impulse, argument and logic do but affront the springs of spiritual discernment. They are as the cold, calculating measurement in terms of feet and inches of clouds and sky in a sunset, of lights and shadows whose beauty baffles description. This is not a subject for discussion in the logic of premise and conclusion. It is a great life experience into the depths of whose significance we can enter only by the path of the cross they bear who follow the great Sufferer. When once we have entered it, the wealth of love and devotion which it evokes can not be measured in terms of silver and gold. So meager has been the response of our brotherhood, even in these material symbols, that to recite it would obscure the wealth of treasures that lie hidden there by the glint of a mere surface deposit.

      The Christian ministry has ever been regarded as essentially a willing sacrifice of business and professional careers that men might devote themselves wholly to spiritual and moral interests. Herein lies the explanation of the great majority of instances of need among ministers. Small salaries, the drain of generosity, removals, ill health and misfortune may each contribute to a condition of ultimate dependence. But when all these have been given their due place there still remains the simple fact, that to earn money, to accumulate, men must devote time and energy to money-making. They must acquire financial insight--a sense of values--they must keep in touch with market and property conditions, and watch for opportunities. In short, the science of money-making is as much a discipline as that of any profession. Men devote themselves to it with their whole being and fail. They give their thought, time and energy to it without reserve. Success depends upon the measure and wisdom of their application. The minister is devoted to another discipline. He has little or no time for business interests. Even if out of his salary he should save a little for investment, the whole habit of his life is against the probability of success in its use. He is often a competitor among men as skilled in cleverness as he is prodigal in generosity. Their eyes are blind to everything but personal gain, while he is accustomed to search for the needs of others. They surrender only what the law of the land demands; he is accustomed to give at the impulse of love. In them conscience stirs only under the lash of the strong arm of the law; in him it hears the voice of the orphan's cry. They are the victims of the spirit of accumulation; he is an apostle of generosity. Here is the wisdom that underlies that ordinance of the gospel which provides that they who preach the gospel shall live by it. It is the ordinance of necessity as well as of divine appointment. They can not live otherwise. The discipline of their ministry robs them of business sagacity. What place is there for shrewdness, for financial acumen, a study, of properties, stocks and markets in the mind of the man who is devoted to the demands of human sympathy, of the heart's deep struggles and of the ethical problems of the individual and the state? I have known more than one minister to refuse the offers of business men of their churches to invest their money for them in properties yielding large returns. They were transactions common to the business world and far removed from the hand of the law, but consummated at the cost of another's loss, but these men trained [253] in another spirit could not give their consent even for the reward of relief from necessity. I would not be understood as entering a wholesale impeachment of business men and methods. But, to be true to the facts, we must recognize the intricacies of modern business. It is quite impractical for the minister to acquire skill in these things with the equipment that he must carry for the fulfillment of his ministry. The time element alone is sufficient to preclude efficiency in both. Much more does the element of incompatibility forbid it. The two do not blend well in the same nature. Here great injustice has been done the long procession of men who have constituted the ministry of the church. They have been characterized as shiftless and incompetent in business affairs. To be sure, writers of fiction have glorified them with a wealth of heroism; but the "begging friars," the "poor parson" and the conventional "donation party" have left the imputation of a public charity for which justice demands the touch of a gifted pen in disavowal.

      But the time will never come when the battlefield will be clear of the wounded. I would almost say it would be a hard day for the church when she can no longer claim her old ministers, weak and dependent in body, who need her care. They are the silver cords that bind us to the past. They need us not more than we need them. They may not move so actively among us in bodily presence, their once gifted tongues may be silent in our assemblies, but their daily testimony, though mute--the testimony of a rich and ripened life in Christ Jesus investing even old age with a charm that invites us--this is our priceless heritage. According as we prize this heritage will we be eager to keep burning in the Old Guard the fires of assurance that they are of worth to us. They must not think this is a compassion bestowed upon them, but a contribution to their continued ministry to the church.

[CCR 251-254]