To My Younger Brethren

CHAPTER II.. _the Secret Walk with God_ (ii.).

THE SECRET WALK WITH GOD (ii.).

Secret intercourse with God the life of a Minister's life--The Example of Jesus Christ--Testimony of von Machtholf--Special need of divine communion at the present day--The cry for effort and enterprize--Secularizing theories of religion and the Ministry--A call to young English Clergymen--A caution from Laodicea--Study of the Holy Scriptures--"The New Testament about twice a week"--What says the Ordinal?--M. Henri Lasserre on Devotional Literature and the Gospels--Study the Bible unprofessionally--Bridges' quotation from Witsius--Ridley in the Orchard 21

CHAPTER III.. _secret Study of the Holy Scriptures._

SECRET STUDY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.

A fragmentary chapter--Higher Criticism--A technical and innocent term--Actual assertions of certain critics--"Do not follow this Book; follow Christ"--Weigh facts before theories--Testimony of Nature and History to Scripture--The Duke of Argyll in the Nineteenth Century--Prediction--Problem of the Human Knowledge of Jesus Christ--Current fulfilments of Prophecy--Methods of Bible Study--The plough--The spade--Specimen of spade-husbandry, in a Church Congress Study of the Epistle to the Philippians 45

CHAPTER IV.. _the Daily Walk with Others_ (i.).

THE DAILY WALK WITH OTHERS (i.).

Secret Communion with God must accompany everything else--We are watched--Self-respect--Consistency largely means Considerateness--"A consistent gentleman"--The Tongue--St Augustine's couplet for the dinner-table--The Clergy-House, its opportunities and risks--The duty of Example--Is it remembered as it used to be?--"For their sakes I sanctify Myself"--"Others" and their claims on us--Manner--Temper--Simeon's patience--The Secret of the Presence 79

CHAPTER V.. _the Daily Walk with Others_ (ii.).

THE DAILY WALK WITH OTHERS (ii.).

"Take heed unto thyself"--Relations with Woman--Christian chivalry--And Christian caution--Special difficulties--"Know thyself"--Celibacy--The Clergyman's Wife--The problem of means--The Clergyman and money--Pecuniary intemperance--Accurate accounts--Investment circulars--"Lay not up for yourselves" 101

CHAPTER VI.. _the Daily Walk with Others_ (iii.).

THE DAILY WALK WITH OTHERS (iii.).

Curate and Incumbent--A Chancellor on Curates--The ideal Incumbent--No Incumbent perfect--And no parish perfectly content--Loyal watchfulness needed accordingly--The Curate's Party--"The lost grace, humility"--Subordination--Take sides against yourself--A letter to The Record on Curates' grievances. 123

CHAPTER VII.. _pastor in Parish_ (i.).

PASTOR IN PARISH (i.).

A boundless subject--Visiting--All-important--Prepare for the round with prayer--Method--Brevity but not hurry--An example--Courtesy--It must be impartial--Visitation of the sick--Its special demands--Punctuality always a duty--Use of the Bible--The advantage of coming as "the Clergyman"--Mistaken for the undertaker--Come to the point--Lying in wait for the occasion--Happy rebukes to timid reticence 147

CHAPTER VIII.. _pastor in Parish_ (ii.).

PASTOR IN PARISH (ii.).

Teach as you go--Urgent need of teaching--About Christ--And the Holy Spirit--And Sacraments--Common mistakes about the teaching of the Church--Sin--Evidences--Recollections of a visiting round--The retired tradesman--The sceptical blacksmith--The invalid artizan--The civil-servant--The consumptive--The dying printer--The cripple--Aged poor saints--Saddening visits--Humbling memories--A bright conversion at eighty-two 173

CHAPTER IX.. _the Clergyman and the Prayer Book._

THE CLERGYMAN AND THE PRAYER BOOK.

"As bad as inspired"--Imperfections in the Book--Yet it is priceless--Spirituality of the Prayer Book--What it takes for granted in the worshipper--A remarkable reason for secession--The Prayer Book as a weapon--Its Scripturality--Its compilers jealous for the Word of God--Ministerial use of the Prayer Book--Put yourself into it--We are not to preach the prayers--Yet we are to pray them--Reading of the Lessons--Baptism--Marriage--Burial--The Holy Communion--Reverence--Of what sort--Instruction-addresses on the Prayer Book--"Less worship" 201

CHAPTER X.. _preaching_ (i.).

PREACHING (i.).

The Pulpit a central point in the Ministry--Mutual influence of "parish-work" and preaching--"Truth through personality"--Let us "labour in the Word"--"Litho Sermons"--Addison's village-parson and his sermons--Attractive preaching--Is a duty--Audibility--Of the right sort--Good English--Why to be cultivated--Mr Spurgeon's style--French hearers of an English preacher--Good effects on his style--"Written or extempore?"--Length--Action 225

CHAPTER XI.. _preaching_ (ii.).

PREACHING (ii.).

Further remarks on Attractiveness--And, in passing, on Ministerial Considerateness--This is to be practised in preaching--As well as in other functions--Attractiveness to be guarded by Faithfulness--Requisites to attractiveness--"Preach the Gospel earnestly, interestingly, fully"--Jesus Christ is the Gospel--Personal conviction the essence of Earnestness--"Matter-of-Fact"--Interest sustained by anecdote and illustration--But still more by intelligibility and practicality--Expository sermons--Fulness in the message--Jesus Christ for us--And in us--The Holy Spirit must work with the Word 249

CHAPTER XII.. _preaching_ (iii.).

PREACHING (iii.).

Notes from a Sermon-Lecture--On diction, arrangement, fidelity to the text, proportion of parts, accuracy--On statements about revelation, justification, faith, grace--A paper in The Churchman on Old Sermons--Be a preacher indeed, whatever be the fashion of the time--The Directory of 1645--Its instructions on "the Preaching of the Word"--Spiritual Power in Preaching--How sought and received--Farewell 273

Fordington Pulpit 301

"What contradictions meet In Ministers' employ! It is a bitter sweet, A sorrow full of joy; No other post affords a place For equal honour or disgrace"

OLNEY HYMNS.

"The Interpreter had Christian into a private Room, and bid his Man open a Door; the which when he had done, Christian saw a Picture of a very grave Person hang up against the Wall, and this was the fashion of it: It had eyes lift up to Heaven, the best of Books was in its hand, the Law of Truth was written upon its lips, the World was behind his back; it stood as if it Pleaded with Men, and a Crown of gold did hang over its head."

PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

CHAPTER I.. _the Secret Walk with God_ (i.).

THE SECRET WALK WITH GOD (i.).

Pastor, for the round of toil See the toiling soul is fed; Shut the chamber, light the oil, Break and eat the Spirit's bread; Life to others would'st thou bring? Live thyself upon thy King.

Let me explain in this first sentence that when in these pages I address "my Younger Brethren," I mean brethren in the Christian Ministry in the Church of England. Let me limit my reference still further, by premising that very much of what I say will be said as to brethren who have lately taken holy Orders, and are engaged in the work of assistant Curacies.

AIM OF THE BOOK.

Day by day, for many years past, my life has lain among men preparing themselves for just that work. As a matter of course my thoughts have run incessantly in that direction. Many a lecture in the library where we work together, and many a conversation in dining-hall, or by study fire, or in college garden, or on country road, has given point to those thoughts and enabled me, I trust, better to understand my younger Brethren, and with more sympathy to make myself, as an elder brother, understood by them. What I here seek to do, with the gracious aid of our blessed Master, is somewhat to extend the range of such talks, and to ask a friendly hearing from younger Brethren in the holy Ministry with whom I have never had the opportunity of speaking personally.

I have not the least intention of writing a treatise on the Christian Pastorate. To talk to young Christian Ministers about some important details of pastoral life and work, but above all of life, inward and outward--this is my simple purpose.

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THREE LINES OF PRAYER.

One day in each week, at Ridley Hall, we unite in special prayer, without liturgical form, for those members of the Hall who have gone out into actual ministry. As I lead my dear younger Brethren in that supplication, the heart feels itself full of many, very many, well-remembered faces, characters, lives. It seems to see those many old friends scattered abroad in the Lord's work-field; and it sees, of course, a very large variety among them, in the way of both character and circumstances. But, with all this consciousness of differences, my thoughts and my petitions always, by a deep necessity, run for all alike along three main paths. The first prayer is for the young Clergyman's inner and secret Life and Walk with God. The second is for his daily and hourly general Intercourse with Men. The third is for his official Ministrations of the Word and Ordinances of the Gospel. And in all these directions, after all, one desire, one prayer, has to be offered, the prayer that everywhere and always, from the inmost recesses of life to its largest and most public circumference, the Lord and Master may take, and keep, full possession of the servant. I pray that in secret devotion, and in secret habits, Jesus Christ may be intensely present with the man; and that in common intercourse, in all its parts, He may be the constant and all-influencing Companion, to stimulate, to control, to chasten, to gladden, to empower; and that in the preaching of the Word the servant may really and manifestly speak from, and for, and in, his Lord; and that in ministration of the sacramental and other Ordinances he may truly and unmistakably walk before Him in holy simplicity, holy reverence, and full spiritual reality, "serving the Lord," and serving the flock, "with all humility of mind." [Acts xx. 19.]

My present talks on paper will take very much the lines of these prayers. Secret walk with God, common and general walk with men, special ministrations--I desire to say a little on each and all of these points, and more or less in this order, though without attempting too rigid an arrangement, where one subject must often run over into another.

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SECRET WALK WITH GOD.

Let me take up the first great topic of the three for a few preliminary words in this chapter: THE SECRET WALK WITH GOD of the young Pastor of Christ's flock.

HINDRANCES: WORK.

My brotherly reader will not need any long explanation or careful apology from me here. He knows as well as I do, on the one hand, that a close secret walk with God is unspeakably important in pastoral life, and, on the other hand, that pastoral life, and not least in its early days, is often allowed to hinder or minimize the real, diligent work (for it is a work indeed in its way) of that close secret walk. He finds all too many possible interferences with the inner working on the part of the outer. Such interferences come from very different quarters. The new Curacy, the new duties and opportunities, if the man has his heart in his ministry, will prove intensely interesting, and at first, very possibly, encouragement and acceptance may predominate over experiences of difficulty and trial. Services, sermons, visits to homes and to schools, with all the miscellanies that attend an active and well-ordered parochial organization--these things are sure to have a special and exciting interest for most young men who have taken Orders in earnest. And it will be almost inevitable that the Curate, under even the most wise, considerate, and unselfish of Incumbents, should find "work" threatening rapidly to absorb so much, not of time only but thought and heart, that the temptation is to abridge and relax very seriously indeed secret devotion, secret study of Scripture, and generally secret discipline of habits, that all-important thing.

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