nium--but here and there twos
and threes, and more men than that, who will throw their whole hearts
into the work of such a class till they come out of the hall in
experimental religion like Sir Proteus in the play:

Their years but young, but their experience old,
Their heads unmellowed, but their judgment ripe.

It is quite true, that, as my old minister shrewdly said to me, even the
Holy Ghost cannot inspire an experience. No. But a class of genuine
experimental divinity would surely help to foster and develop an
experience. And, till the class is established, any student who has the
heart for it may lay in the best of the class library for a few
shillings. Mr. Thin will tell you that there is no literature that is
such a drug in the market as the best books of Experimental Divinity. No
wonder, then, that we make such slow and short way in the skilfulness,
success, and acceptance of our preaching and our pastorate.

3. But, at the same time, my brethren, all your ministers' experience of
personal religion will be lost upon you unless you are yourselves
attending the same school. The salvation of the soul, you must
understand, is not offered to ministers only. Ministers are not the only
men who are, to begin with, dead in trespasses and sins. The Son of God
did not die for ministers only. The Holy Ghost is not offered to
ministers only. A clean, humble, holy heart is not to be the pursuit of
ministers only. It is not to His ministers only that our Lord says, Take
up My yoke and learn of Me. The daily cross is not the opportunity of
ministers only. It is not to ministers only that tribulation worketh
patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. It was to all
who had obtained like precious faith with their ministers that Peter
issued this exhortation that they were to give all diligence to add to
their faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance,
and to temperance patience,--and so on. Now, my brethren, unless all
that is on foot in yourselves, as well as in your ministers, then their
progress in Christian experience will only every new Sabbath-day separate
you and your ministers further and further away from one another. When a
minister is really making progress himself in the life of religion that
progress must come out, and ought to come out, both in his preaching and
in his prayers. And, then, two results of all that will immediately
begin to manifest thems