, among the many attractions of our calling on which I should
like to congratulate you this is not the least, that it provides a
definite sphere for the exercise of the benevolent impulses which you
may feel as men and as Christians and, by exercising, develops them.
These impulses may be the strongest and most sacred in our nature. But
in other occupations, in the excitement and competition of life, they
are in great danger of being slowly extinguished. In our calling, on
the contrary, they receive constant opportunities of nurture and
development. Their healthy and spontaneous activity is the soul of
ministerial work; and this is stimulated by the sense of
responsibility to fill the sphere allotted to us and exhaust its
possibilities.

But, besides the sense of duty, there is a stimulus of a still more
affecting kind which comes to a man when he is set over a congregation
of his own. When I first was settled in a church, I discovered a thing
of which nobody had told me and which I had not anticipated, but which
proved a tremendous aid in doing the work of the ministry. I fell in
love with my congregation. I do not know how otherwise to express it.
It was as genuine a blossom of the heart as any which I have ever
experienced. It made it easy to do anything for my people; it made it
a perfect joy to look them in the face on Sunday morning. I do not
know if this is a universal experience; but I should think it is
common. For my part, I like to meet a man who thinks his own
congregation, however small it may be, the most important one in the
Church and is rather inclined to bore you with its details. When a man
thus falls in love with his people, the probability is that something
of the same kind happens to them likewise. Just as a wife prefers her
own husband to every other man, though surely she does not necessarily
suppose him to be the most brilliant specimen in existence, so a
congregation will generally be found to prefer their own minister, if
he is a genuine man, to every other, although surely not always
entertaining the hallucination that he is a paragon of ability. Thus
to love and to be loved is the secret of a happy and successful
ministry.

* * * * *

Taking up the responsibilities of his office in the spirit which I
have described, St. Paul would have found any sphere, however limited,
laborious. But, in point of fact, the sphere allotted to him was an
enormous one. It was