When Union Theological Seminary in Richmond invited the professor of Pastoral Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City to give the Sprunt Lectures, this book came into being, and we can be grateful for a volume which deals with the pastoral ministry in the current terms and with every recent insight of psychology, theology, sociology and plain horse sense carefully accounted for. For instance, the volume is not for ministers only, but with the new conception of the parish, where the whole people of God the ministry of the Church, the volume can be read with profit by every layman called to a leadership position. The fact that a well-trained layman will understand the book is just one more mark in its favor. Obviously more copies will be sold to Parsons than to anyone , and for them, the last two chapters on ""The Minister's Self Knowledge"" and ""Life in the Church and the Healing of the Human Spirit"" are worth the cost of the volume. We have so much new knowledge of the way persons act and react, and so much new insight into what the Gospel message is for our time, that it is high time to have a book like this which beings us to a current position about the pastoral ministry of the Church.