self-satisfied youth and transform him into the pastor, the tried and
trusted friend of the tempted, the sorrow-laden, and the shipwrecked
hearts and lives in his congregation! What years and years of the
selectest experiences are needed to teach the average divinity student to
know himself, to track out and run to earth his own heart, and thus to
lay open and read other men's hearts to their self-deceived owners in the
light of his own. A matter, moreover, that he gets not one word of help
toward in all his college curriculum. David was able to say in his old
age that he fed the flock of God in Israel according to the integrity of
his heart, and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands. But what
years and years of shortcoming and failure in private and in public life
lie behind that fine word 'integrity'! as also what stumbles and what
blunders behind that other fine word 'skilfulness'! But, then, how a
lightest touch of a preacher's own dear-bought experience skilfully let
fall brightens up an obscure scripture! How it sends a thrill through a
prayer! How it wings an arrow to the conscience! How it sheds abroad
balm upon the heart! Let no minister, then, lose heart when he is sent
back to the school of experience. He knows in theory that tribulation
worketh patience, and patience experience, but it is not theory, but
experience, that makes a minister after God's own heart. I sometimes
wish that I may live to see a chair of Experimental Religion set up in
all our colleges. I fear it is a dream, and that it must have been
pronounced impracticable long ago by our wisest heads. Still, all the
same, that does not prevent me from again and again indulging my dream. I
indulge my fond dream again as often as I look back on my own tremendous
mistakes in the management of my own personal and ministerial life, as
well as sometimes see some signs of the same mistakes in some other
ministers. In my dream for the Church of the future I see the programme
of lectures in the Experimental Class and the accompanying examinations.
I see the class library, and I envy the students. I am present at the
weekly book-day, and at the periodical addresses delivered to the class
by those town and country ministers who have been most skilful in their
pastorate and most successful in the conversion and in the character of
their people. And, unless I wholly deceive myself, I see, not all the
class--that will never be till the millen