To My Younger Brethren | Page 4

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.
*HINDRANCES: SOLITUDE.
Then, on the other hand, there is a risk and trial from a region quite opposite. The Curate comes to his new work, and takes up his abode in lodgings--alone. Only a few months ago, perhaps only a few weeks ago, he was in rooms at College, amidst all the social as well as mental interests of University life, and (so it is, thank God, for many University men now) feeling on every side the help of Christian friendship and fellowship of the warmest and truest sort. And now, socially and as to fellowship in Christ, he is, to speak comparatively, alone. I say, comparatively. Very likely he has found in his Incumbent a friend and elder brother, perhaps a friend and loving father, in the Lord. And most probably he will find among his people, and that very soon if he is on the watch, friends in Christ, gentle or simple. He may be associated with a brother Curate or Curates; and if so, the inmost aim of both or all ought to be, and in most cases will be, not only to work in the same parish but to work heart to heart as "in Him." Nevertheless, the Vicar or Rector, though a friend, is a very busy friend; and so is the brother Curate; and the Christian friend in the parish is after all only one of the many souls to whom the man has to minister, and he must not forget those who perhaps need him most just because they are least congenial to him.
*ITS DANGERS.
So the sense of change, of solitude, in such part of his life as is spent indoors, may be, and, as I know, very often is, real and deep, sad and sorrowful, and in itself not wholesome, to the young Minister of Christ. Possibly my reader knows nothing of all this; but I think it more likely that at least he knows something of it. And it needs his prompt and watchful dealing if it is not to hurt him greatly. Solitude will not by itself, if I judge rightly, help him to secret intercourse with God. A feeling of solitude, under most circumstances, much more tends, by itself, to drive a man unhealthily inward, in unprofitable questionings and broodings, or in still less happy exercises of thought. Or it drives him unhealthily outward, quickening the wish for mere stimulants and excitements of mind and interest. Aye, let me not shrink from saying it, it sometimes quickens a wish for "stimulants" in the most literal sense of the word. Exhausting and multifarious parochial work, and the lonely bachelor quarters at the day's end, have brought to many a young man sore temptations of that sort, and sometimes they have won the battle, to the wreck and ruin of the work and of the worker.
HINDRANCES ARE OCCASIONS.
Well, all these facts or possibilities are just so many reminders that the new Curate's life will not, of itself, greatly help him to maintain and quicken his Secret Walk with God, that vital necessity for his work. It certainly will not do so directly; it will, directly, be a problem, not an aid. But on that very account, dear Brother and reader, your new conditions of life may prove indirectly a most powerful aid, by being a constant and urgent occasion. As you are a Minister of Christ, your life and work will, in the Lord's sight, be a failure, yes, I repeat it, a failure, be the outside and the reputation what they may, if you do not walk with God in secret. But therefore your life and work are a daily and hourly occasion for the positive resolve, in His Name, that walk with Him you will. Recognize the risks, right and left, the risks brought by pastoral activities and interests, and those brought by pastoral loneliness and uncheerfulness. Remember the vital necessity amidst those risks. And then you will the more deliberately purpose and plan how to guard your secret devotions, and how to order your secret hours even when devotion is not your direct duty, so that