expression of what we are.

Evidently, therefore, there can be nothing so important as carefully
to watch over our inner life, and see that it be large, sweet and
spiritual, and that it be growing.

Yet the temptations to neglect and overlook this and turn our
attention in other directions are terribly strong. The ministerial
life is a very outside life; it is lived in the glare of publicity; it
is always pouring out. We are continually preaching, addressing
meetings, giving private counsel, attending public gatherings, going
from home, frequenting church courts, receiving visits, and occupied
with details of every kind. We live in a time when all men are busy,
and ministers are the busiest of men. From Monday morning till Sunday
night the bustle goes on continually.

Our life is in danger of becoming _all_ outside. We are called upon to
express ourselves before conviction has time to ripen. Our spirits get
too hot and unsettled to allow the dew to fall on them. We are
compelled to speak what is merely the recollection of conviction which
we had some time ago, and to use past feelings over again. Many a day
you will feel this; you will long with your whole heart to escape away
somewhere into obscurity, and be able to keep your mouth closed for
weeks. You will know the meaning of that great text for ministers,
"The talk of the lips tendeth only to penury,"--that is, it shallows
the spirit within.

This is what we have to fight against. The people we live among and
the hundred details of our calling will steal away our inner life
altogether, if they can. And then, what is our outer life worth? It is
worth nothing. If the inner life get thin and shallow, the outer life
must become a perfunctory discharge of duties. Our preaching will be
empty, and our conversation and intercourse unspiritual, unenriching
and flavourless. We may please our people for a time by doing all they
desire and being at everybody's call; but they will turn round on us
in disappointment and anger in the day when, by living merely the
outer life, we have become empty, shallow and unprofitable.

Take heed to thyself! If we grow strong and large inwardly, our people
will reap the fruit of it in due time: our preaching will have sap and
power and unction; and our intercourse will have about it the breath
of another world.

We _must_ find time for reading, study, meditation and prayer. We
should at least insist on having a large forenoon, up, say,