To My Younger Brethren | Page 6

Lord.
PRAY AS A PRIVATE CHRISTIAN.
In such acts of worship, morning and night, thought for others, for dear ones, for parishioners, for colleagues, will have its full place of course. Let it be so, with an ever-growing sense of the preciousness of the work of intercession. But I do meanwhile say to my Brother in Christ, take care that no pre-occupation with things pastoral allows you to forget the supreme need of drawing out of Christ's fulness, and out of the treasures of His Word, for your own soul and life, as if that were the one and solitary soul and life in existence. We Clergy are in danger of becoming too official, too clerical, even in our prayers. We are the Lord's Ministers; we have a cure and charge of souls as the unordained Christian has not; and let us daily remember it, humbly and reverently. But also we are, all the while, sheep of the flock, absolutely dependent on the Shepherd, men who for their own souls' acceptance, and holiness, and heaven, must for themselves "live at the Fountain." We have to serve others, and "lay ourselves out" for them, daily and hourly. But on that very account, that "our selves" may be, if I may say so, worth the laying out, we must see that "our selves" are, in their own innermost life and experience, filled with the Spirit of God, filled with the presence of an indwelling Lord Jesus Christ by the Spirit. And so we must worship Him, and draw on Him, and abide in Him, and acquaint ourselves with Him, just as if there were no flock at all, that we may the better be of use to the flock.
LIVE BEHIND YOUR MINISTRY.
I am sure that this is an important point for the thought and practice of the young Clergyman. While never really forgetting his ordained character, let him, for the very purposes of his ordained work, continually "live behind" not only the work but the character; living in the presence, in the love, in the life, of his Lord and Head, simply in the character of the redeemed sinner, the personal believer, the glad younger Brother of the glorious Firstborn, the living Christian with the living Christ; "knowing whom he has believed," [2 Tim. i. 12.] and walking by faith in Him.
FOR THE MINISTRY'S SAKE.
Do you so live, by His grace and mercy? Is the sitting-room and the bedroom of your curacy-lodging the place where you habitually hold intercourse in this holy simplicity with Him who has loved you and given Himself for you? Then I venture to say that all the more for this, by that same grace and mercy, you shall be enabled to "lay yourself out" for others, in your pastoral charge. You shall understand other men better, by thus securing for your own soul a deeper understanding of the Lord Jesus and a fuller sympathy (if the word is reverent) with Him. I hardly care to analyze how, but somehow, you shall more readily and closely "get at" men through this direct, simple, unofficial, unclerical drawing very near indeed to God in Christ. The more you know Him thus at first-hand the more shall you understand alike the needs of the human heart (of which all individual hearts are but various instances), and the supplies that are laid up for all its needs in Him. And so you shall go out among your people armed, equipped, with a truly heaven-given sympathy and tact. True personal intercourse with the Lord, the very closest and deepest, is the very thing to open the whole man out for others, and to teach him how, with a loving intuition, to look into them and "upon their things." [Phil. ii. 4.]
A HYMN.
In the next Chapter I shall speak a little more about the young Clergyman's secret devotion, and secret study of the heavenly Word. But enough for the present. And let me close with the quotation of a hymn,[1] a new friend of mine, but already a very dear one, and thankfully added to the treasures of memory. It puts in the simplest form possible, while in a form most beautiful, the vital truth that "intercourse with God is the power for holy service." Happy the young Clergyman whose secret daily life, from its beginning in the "Morning Watch," on through the intercourse and energies of the day, up to the evening hour of weariness and repose, is a translation into experience of that blessed hymn.
[1] By G.M. TAYLOR: Hymns of Consecration and Faith (Second Edition), No. 349.
"TELL HIM ALL."
"When thou wakest in the morning, Ere thou tread the untried way Of the lot that lies before thee Through the coming busy day; Whether sunbeams promise brightness, Whether dim forebodings fall, Be thy dawning glad