TEE MINISTER'S SON 347 



I was ever of opinion that the honest man who married, and brought up a 

 large family, did more service than he who continued single and only talked of 

 population; from this motive I had scarcely taken orders a year before I chose 

 my wife as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy face, but for such 

 qualities as would wear well. 



"With such serious purpose and intent the founders of clerical 

 households have exalted religion and adorned society. Goethe, when a 

 young man, fell in love with Frederike Brion, the attractive daughter 

 of the pastor at Sessenhiem. It was the purest and strongest love of 

 his passionate career, and his intimate knowledge of the life of that 

 clerical household led him to write: 



A Protestant country pastor is perhaps the most beautiful topic for a 

 modern idyl; he appears like Melchizedek, as priest and king in one person. He 

 is usually associated by occupation and outward condition with the most innocent 

 conceivable estate on earth, that of the farmer; he is father, master of his house, 

 and thoroughly identified with his congregation. On this pure, beautiful, earthly 

 foundation rests his higher vocation: to introduce men into life, to care for their 

 spiritual education, to bless, to instruct, to strengthen, to comfort them in all the 

 epochs of life, and, if the comfort for the present is not sufficient, to cheer them 

 with the assured hope of a more happy future. 



" The one idyl of modern life " Coleridge termed the ministerial 

 family life, and Wordsworth thought it worthy of praise in his "Ec- 

 clesiastical Sonnets," where he sings, 



A genial hearth, a hospitable board, 

 And a refined rusticity, belong 

 To the neat mansion, where, his flock among, 



The learned Pastor dwells, their watchful Lord. 



In 1750, Justus Moser calculated that in the two centuries after the 

 reformation, more than ten millions of human beings in all lands owed 

 their existence to the clerical family. In the century and a half since 

 he made his estimate the number have very likely trebled. And what 

 influence have these millions of ministers' children exerted upon 

 civilization? To judge of this a brief study of eminent names in 

 Protestant countries is most illuminating. 



In the " Dictionary of National Biography," England, there are 

 1,270 names of eminent men who were sons of clergymen. There are 

 510 names of famous men who were sons of lawyers, and 350 who were 

 sons of physicians. In this single compilation of great names in Eng- 

 lish history there are 410 more sons of ministers than sons of doctors 

 and lawyers together. In a recent issue of " Who's Who," for America, 

 out of nearly 12,000 names, almost 1,000 are sons of clergymen, a num- 

 ber out of all proportion to the whole number of ministers in the popu- 

 lation of the country. According to that standard, there should have 

 been not more than fifty of these famous men the sons of clergymen. 



Time would fail to tell of all the notable men in all departments of 

 human activity who were sons of ministers. We mention only a few 



