t the claims of
what we have really grasped as truth in the presence of the Lord? It is
well for us that martyrs and confessors, and their worthy successors,
our Evangelical ancestors of a century ago, knew how to answer that
question.

CONVICTION SACRED, SELF NOWHERE.

"I aim to speak with all humility and sympathy. But I cannot but thus
earnestly express the unalterable conviction that the only ministerial
life which can be 'sanctified and meet for the Master's use' is the life
in which conviction is sacred, in which Christ is all, and in which self
is nowhere."

CHAPTER VII.

_PASTOR IN PARISH_ (i.).

_Master, to the flock I speed,
In Thy presence, in Thy name;
Show me how to guide, to feed,
How aright to cheer and blame;
With me knock at every door;
Enter with me, I implore._

We have talked together about the young Clergyman's secret life, and
private life, and his life in (so to speak) non-clerical intercourse
with others, and now lastly of his life as it stands related to his
immediate leader in the Ministry. In this latter topic we have already
touched the great matter which comes now at once before us, the man's
work amongst his neighbours as he approaches them in his proper
character, as a Pastor.

"THE PULSE OF THE MACHINE."

How shall I speak of "parish-work"? It would be a boundless subject if
treated in detail and in the style of a directory of methods. But such a
treatment is far from my purpose. To undertake it, I should not only
need to be a widely experienced Pastor, which I cannot claim to be, for
my life for many years has been mainly devoted to academic teaching; I
should need to be several widely experienced Pastors bound up into one
living volume. So let no one expect to find here a prescription for the
right plans and right practice of the many departments of the rural
pastorate, or of the urban, or suburban; directions how to organize
work, and how to develop it; how to deal with the Sunday School, or the
Day School, or the Institute, or the Guild, or the Visitors' Meeting, or
the Missionary Association. My hope is rather to get behind all these
things to the pulse of the busy machinery; to offer a few hints to my
younger Brethren "how to do it," from the point of view of their
personal and inner preparedness for the multifold work, and to state
some plain general principles which may run through all the doing.

VISITING.

I set before me then the Cur