glad that you have been home. I feel that home is a revelation--a
means whereby the Eternal Father shows us Himself and His purposes, a
strengthening and refreshing of our tired souls. . . . I have prayed
earnestly for you that your faith and love may not fail. I feel
intensely the same difficulty as you, and I am only slowly learning to
overcome it. I do not think we can learn to love people who are
altogether different from us in many respects, all at once. I love
some men with a strange, unsatisfied affection. All my thoughts about
them I am {160} gradually learning to resolve into prayers for them,
and I want to live longer that I may pray for them more.

Well, it seems to me that God gives us this affection that we may learn
to do to others as we would do to these. I cannot pretend to care for
many with whom I come into contact as much as I do for the few. But I
can pray for them, and the feeling will more or less come in time.
Just try to pray for some one person committed to your charge--say for
half an hour or an hour--and you will begin really to love him. As you
lay his life before God, as you think of his needs and hopes, and
failings and possibilities, as you pray earnestly for him as you would
for some one whom you feel intense affection for; at the end of the
time you will feel more interested in him, you will think of him not as
one of a class but as a separate, mysterious person. You will not, it
may be, have time to pray for many in this way, but you will learn
imperceptibly to extend your sympathy--to feel real love for many more.
I advise you to keep a record of these prayers. It is quite worth your
while to take practically a day off sometimes, and to force yourself to
pray. It will be the best day's work you have ever done in your life.
Remember that!

Don't be troubled by comparing yourself with other clergymen. I think
you are like me--not ecclesiastically minded. I don't have the sort of
feelings which a large number of persons have about their work and
their preaching. I can't put the difference into words, yet I feel it.
But I must serve God in my own way, and I am sure that He will use me
to do the work for which I am best fitted. And the {161} same is true
of you. Try to refer all your actions to His standard; and test your
work in His presence; and don't ask what So-and-so thinks of it.

I very much wish you had some gentlemen to associate with besides
parsons. You must