To My Younger Brethren | Page 6

surely not often, make it hard to keep it.
But it is extremely important, for the man who would walk closely and
humbly with his God, to end the day deliberately at His feet. And here
accordingly is another occasion for watchfulness, and for method, and
for will. Do not drift into the night. Have a settled hour when, as a habit,
you lay interests and intercourse of other sorts down, and turn
unhurried to the holy interview, spreading open your Bible by the lamp,
the Bible marked and scored with signs of past research, and then
kneeling, or standing, or pacing, for your prayer--your prayer which is
to be the very simplest (while most reverent) speech with the 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,