d say to you,
to a labourious life. If you are thinking of the ministry otherwise,
you had better turn back. Ours is a more crowded existence than that
of any other profession.

There is the work of study and preaching. I do not know the details of
a minister's week among you; but in Scotland ministers have, as a
rule, two discourses to prepare for Sunday, besides a lesson for the
Bible Class, which may involve as much work as a sermon; and we have
at least one week-day meeting at which a lengthy address is given.
For these four discourses subjects have to be found; materials for
exposition and illustration have to be collected; the mind has first
to make each subject its own and then to shape it into a form suitable
for popular effect. A sermon may sometimes, indeed, come in a flash,
and perhaps there is something of sudden discovery in the very best
work; but even then time is required to work out the thought and
enrich it with subsidiary thinking; and there are many discourses
which are of no value without extensive investigation and the patient
working-up of the quarried materials. Then follows the writing. This
will take at least six or eight hours for a discourse, and may easily
take much more. Many ministers do not write more than one discourse a
week fully out, and probably they are wise; but many write two. Here,
then, there is obviously ample work for a long forenoon on five days
of the week. I have always had to add the afternoon of Friday and
Saturday, and often the evening as well. Then comes the hard and
exciting work of Sunday. It is a religious duty to rest on Monday, as
we do not get the bodily rest of the Sabbath.[56]

There is the work of visitation. The sick and the bed-ridden must be
visited; and it is of enormous profit to visit the whole congregation
from house to house. As Dr. Chalmers said, the directest way to a
man's heart is generally through the door of his home. Acquaintance
with the actual circumstances of the families of the congregation
gives wonderful reality and point to the prelections of Sunday. Our
sermons must rise out of the congregation if they are ever to reach
down to it again. Here, it is evident, there is abundant work for the
afternoons which study leaves free. Many ministers have to add one or
two evenings, the evening being the best time to find their people at
home.

There is a third mass of work of an exceedingly miscellaneous
character which absorbs much time and st