[47] This may be a reason for rather devoting a whole diet of worship to
the children once a month or once a quarter than only giving them a few
minutes every Sabbath. But many follow the latter practice with
excellent results. Perhaps there ought to be something specially for the
children at every service. If I may mention my own practice, I have,
during my whole ministry, preached to children once a month; and every
Sunday I have a children's hymn in the forenoon and a prayer for
children in the afternoon.

LECTURE VII.

THE PREACHER AS A CHRISTIAN.

In the last lecture I spoke of St. Paul as a Man, showing how
remarkable were his endowments and acquirements, and how these told in
his apostolic career. But it was not through these that he was what he
was. Great as were the gifts bestowed on him by nature and cultivated
by education, they were utterly inadequate to produce a character and
a career like his. It was what Christianity added to these that made
him St. Paul.

It is right enough that we should now recognise the importance of his
natural gifts and trace out the ways in which Providence was shaping
his life towards its true aim before he was conscious of it. But St.
Paul himself had hardly patience for such cool reflections. He turned
away with strong aversion from his pre-Christian life as something
condemned and lost; and he delighted to attribute all that he was and
did to the influence of Christ alone. In my last lecture I quoted a
single passage to show that he himself recognised that his natural
endowments had been bestowed in order to fit him for the peculiar
work which he was destined to accomplish in the world; but I question
if from all his writings I could have quoted another passage to the
same effect. It was only for a moment that he allowed himself to stand
on this point of view; whereas we could quote from every part of his
writings such sayings as these: "By the grace of God I am what I am";
"I laboured more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of
God in me"; "It is no more I that live, but Christ liveth in me."

That this was his habitual way of estimating his own achievements is
strikingly illustrated by his mode of thinking and speaking of certain
defects in the equipment with which nature had supplied him for the
career on which he was embarked. Gifted as he was, even he did not
possess all gifts. He lacked one or two of those which might have been
thought most e