any teaching out of the long and deep and
intense experience of the teacher. And as the Master was, so are all His
ministers. When I read, for instance, what William Law says about the
heart-searching and heart-cleansing efficacy of intercessory prayer in
the case of him who continues all his life so to pray, and carries such
prayer through all the experiences and all the relationships of life, I
do not need you to tell me where that great man of God made that great
discovery. I know that he made it in his own closet, and on his own
knees, and in his own evil heart. And so, also, when I come nearer home.
Whenever I hear a single unconventional, immediate, penetrating,
overawing petition or confession in a minister's pulpit prayer or in his
family worship, I do not need to be told out of what prayer-book he took
that. I know without his telling me that my minister has been, all
unknown to me till now, at that same school of prayer to which his Master
was put in the days of His flesh, and out of which He brought the
experiences that He afterwards put into the Friend at midnight, and the
Importunate widow, as also into the Egg and the scorpion, the Bread and
the stone, the Knocking and the opening, the Seeking and the finding.

His children thus most dear to Him,
Their heavenly Father trains,
Through all the hard experience led
Of sorrows and of pains.

And if His children, then ten times more the tutors and governors of His
children,--the pastors and the preachers He prepares for His people.

2. Again, though I will not put those two collegiate shepherds against
one another, yet, in order to bring out the whole truth on this matter, I
will risk so far as to say that where we cannot have both Knowledge and
Experience, by all means let us have Experience. Yes, I declare to you
that if I were choosing a minister for myself, and could not have both
the book-knowledge and the experience of the Christian life in one and
the same man; and could not have two ministers, one with all the talents
and another with all the experiences; I would say that, much as I like an
able and learned sermon from an able and learned man, I would rather have
less learning and more experience. And, then, no wonder that such
pastors and preachers are few. For how costly must a thoroughly good
minister's experience be to him! What a quantity and what a quality of
experience is needed to take a raw, light-minded, ignorant, and