Thirty Years in the Itinerancy — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Thirty Years in the Itinerancy
John Stuart Mill · en
who was subject to so many attacks, especially in high places, and who
constantly felt himself preached to and prayed at in almost every
religious assembly, must be more than human, not to say less than a
Christian, to bear up under such a pressure. I clearly saw that one of
two things must be done, and that speedily. Either I must yield to the
manifest demand of the church or "go west." I chose the latter. Nor was
this decision mere obstinacy. There were several things to be considered
and carefully weighed and determined before entering upon a work of such
grave responsibilities as the Itinerant ministry. First of all, the
question must be settled in a man's conviction of duty; then the
question of one's fitness for the work; and, finally, the financial
question could not be ignored. To enter the Itinerancy involved
responsibilities that could only be sustained under the deepest
convictions that can possibly penetrate a human soul. The minister is
God's ambassador to lost men. He can only enter upon this work under the
sanction of Divine authority. Having entered he is charged with the care
of souls, and if these shall suffer harm, through his inefficiency or
want of fidelity, he must answer in the Divine assizes for the breach of
trust. Well may the best of men say, "who is sufficient for these
things?" Then add to this grave responsibility, the certain and
manifold trials which must come to every man who enters the Itinerancy.
His very calling makes him a spectacle to men, and necessarily the
subject of adverse criticism. He is the messenger of God and yet the
servant of man. On the one hand, clothed with the authority of heaven,
and on the other reduced to the condition of a servant. Expected to
deliver the high message of the King of Kings, and yet receives his
pulpit under the suffrages of man. Before he receives his appointment,
he is not unfrequently the subject of a sharp canvass from one end of
the Conference to the other, and after he receives it he is liable to
find himself among a people, who had rejected him in the canvass, and
now only acquiesce in the decision from sheer necessity. But if he
escape Scylla in this particular, he is certain to drive upon Charybdis
in another. Granting that his relations and labors may be acceptable, he
falls upon the inevitable necessity of devoting his time and labor,
during the vigor and strength of his days, for a meager compensation,
and then pass into old age, and its attendant infirmities, as a
dependancy, if not a pauper. And now let me submit; with such a picture
hung upon the canopy of the future, and who shall say it is overdrawn?
is it a matter of surprise that a young man should hesitate before
accepting the position of an Itinerant?