Chapter I: Preface

The following pages do not appear to need any extended preface; their topic is set forth in the first lines of the first chapter. With what success it has been handled is another matter.

But as a writer reviews his own words, it is inevitable that some sort of _envoi_ should present itself to his mind. In this case the _envoi_ seems to me to be the vital necessity of personal holiness in the Christian Minister, in order to the right working of the Christian Ministry; a personal holiness which shall be no mere form moulded from without but a life developed into manifestation and action from within.

Never did the Church of Christ more need to remember this than at the present day. The strongest surface currents of the age are against it; alike that of unregulated, hurrying, indiscriminate enterprize, and that of an exaggerated ecclesiasticism. In the one case the worker's communion with God tends to be sacrificed to the work, the fountain choked for the sake of the stream. In the other case there is a serious risk that "the Church" may come to be regarded as an almost substitute for the Lord in matters affecting the life and growth of the Christian man, and of course of the Christian Minister. Sacred are the claims of order and cohesion, but more sacred and more vital still is the call to the individual constituent of the community to come to the living Personal Christ, "nothing between," and to abide in innermost intercourse with Him, and to draw every hour by faith on His great grace.

If these simple pages may at all, in His most merciful hands, promote the holy cause of such a hidden life and its fruitful issues, it will indeed be happiness to the writer. In these days of stifling materialism in philosophy, and withering naturalism in theology, but in which also the Holy Spirit, far and wide, is breathing upon us in special mercy from above, there is no duty more pressing on the Christian than to seek, in the world of work, after that life which is "lived in the flesh by faith in the Son of God," and which is manifested in the strong and patient "meekness of wisdom."

RIDLEY HALL, CAMBRIDGE, _April 22nd, 1892_.

"_Servant of God, be fill'd
With Jesu's love alone;
Upon a sure foundation build,
On Christ the corner-stone;
By faith in Him abide,
Rejoicing with His saints;
To Him with confidence, when tried,
Make known all thy complaints._"

MORAVIAN HYMN-BOOK.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

_THE SECRET WALK WITH GOD_ (i.).
PAGE

Need of watching and prayer over three departments of
a Minister's life--The secret department--Temptations
in it from work--From solitude--Secret Devotion--The
Morning Watch--Physical precautions--Evening
hours--A Minister's prayers must sometimes
forget the Ministry--This will be to the advantage of
the Ministry--"_Tell Him all_" 1

CHAPTER 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._

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.).

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.).

"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.).

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.).

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.).

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._

"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.).

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.).

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