Contented Pastors

Another preacher's name went on the roster of those who have spurned Manhattan pastorates for the greater contentment of provincial charges. The present instance is that of Rev. Robert R. Wicks who has refused to succeed Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin at Manhattan's Madison Avenue Presbysterian Church. Pastor Wicks remains; at Holyoke, Mass., industrial boiling potlet.

Others who have acted similarly are: Tertius van Dyke who left Park Avenue Presbyterian Church for a Connecticut village charge; Charles Clingman whom St. Thomas' could not lure from smoky Birmingham, Ala.; Dr. Harris E. Kirk who has remained in peaceful Baltimore despite the insistences of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Their motives have varied. Pastors Wicks and Clingman have just started their wealthy congregations on movements of community welfare (as Dr. Coffin has already done in Manhattan), work which they feel they cannot conscientiously abandon. Dr. Kirk would not leave his life-long friends. Young Dr. van Dyke simply requires the spiritual benefits of rusticity.

*The prophet Isaiah in Chapter VI, verses 5, 7, 8, of the book of Isaiah, reports: Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar. And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here I am, send me.