ated by the influences of the world; and those
who have experienced them are perhaps made worse instead of better. It
is a very significant thing that is said of the pastor in our Lord's
parable--that he sought the lost sheep "until he found it." We seek:
we even seek labouriously and painfully: but we frequently leave off
just before finding.

A minister told me that, on the Saturday evening before his first
Sunday in his first charge, the experienced minister who was to
introduce him to his people next day was strolling with him in the
vicinity of the village and talking about his duties, when they
chanced to pass a plantation of trees. Pointing to them, the aged
minister asked, "If you had to cut these trees down, how would you go
about it? would you go round the whole plantation, giving each tree a
single blow, and then go round them all again, giving each a second
blow"? "Well, no," he answered, "I think I should attack one tree and
cut at it till it came down; and then go on and do the same to a
second and a third, and so forth." "Well," said his experienced
friend, "that is the way you must do here. After you have been settled
a short time, you will discover which families and individuals are
most impressed by your first efforts, and you must devote yourself to
these susceptible souls, till you have won them thoroughly; and then
in their enthusiasm for yourself and their willingness to work for the
congregation you will have the best foundation for a successful
ministry."

In a former lecture I spoke of the power of discerning in men and
women of every class and condition the humanity which is common to all
and speaking straight to that, without reference to the superficial
differences which distinguish class from class and one individual from
another. But ministerial sympathy has to embrace what is peculiar to
classes and individuals as well as what is common to all. Though St.
Paul, like his Master, had a powerful grasp of what is universal in
humanity, yet to the Jew he made himself a Jew, that he might gain the
Jew, and to them that were without law as without law, that he might
gain them who were without law; he was made all things to all men,
that he might gain the more.

His persuasion obviously was, that God was trying, by His revelation
among those who possessed the Written Word, and by His providence
among those who did not possess it, to lead His children by divers
ways to Himself; and his own duty