nd this
is a fatal mistake. Literature ought to be a supplement to these, not
a substitute for them. I have watched the subsequent career of more
than one student who had pursued this course; and I must say it is not
encouraging. Their supply of ideas soon runs out; their tone becomes
secular; and the people turn away from them dissatisfied.

A student ought, while at college, to make himself master of at least
one or two of the great books of the Christian centuries in which
Christianity is exhibited as a whole by a master mind. If I may be
allowed to mention my own experience, it happened to me, more by
chance, perhaps, than wise choice, to master, when I was a student,
three such books. One was Owen's work on _The Holy Spirit_, another
Weiss' _New Testament Theology_, and the third Conybeare and Howson's
_Life and Epistles of St. Paul_. Each of these may be said, in its own
way, to exhibit Christianity entire, and I learned them almost by
heart, as one does a text-book. I was not then thinking much of
subsequent benefit; but I can say, that each of them has ever since
been a quarry out of which I have dug, and probably I have hardly ever
preached a sermon which has not exhibited traces of their influence.

There is another valuable result which will follow from the early
mastery of books of this kind. You will be laying the foundation of
the habit of what may be called Great Reading, by which I mean the
systematic study of great theological works in addition to the special
reading for the work of each Sunday. Week by week a conscientious
minister has to do an immense amount of miscellaneous reading in
commentaries, dictionaries, etc., in connection with the discourses in
hand; but, in addition to this, he should be enriching the subsoil of
his mind by larger efforts in wider fields. It is far from easy to
carry this on in a busy pastorate; and it is almost impossible unless
the foundation has been laid at college.[65]

One more hint I should like to give: it is a reminiscence from a
casual lecture which I listened to when a student and profited by.
Besides attending to theological studies in general, one ought to have
a specialty. The minister, and even the student before he leaves
college, should be spoken of as the man who knows this or that.
Perhaps the best specialty to choose is some subject which is just
coming into notice, such as, at present, Comparative Religion, or
Christian Ethics, or, best of all, Bibl