The major task of all our theological seminaries is to prepare men for the Christian ministry. It is true that some men who go out from our seminaries will be diverted into other lines of religious service. A few become teachers; others are drawn into the cogs of ecclesiastical machinery in administrative functions for which they are peculiarly fitted. Here and there a man goes through some hard, unhappy experience in a parish and leaves the ministry altogether to become a radical free lance. But these men are in the minority.

The majority of the men who graduate from the seminary become the teachers and pastors of our churches. And whatever the inevitable disciplines and disappointments of their work, they will remain parish ministers to the end. This means that they will do their active work in the world and will make their contribution to the religious life of their time primarily through their identification with three or four successive groups of men, women, and little children to whom they minister.