to two
o'clock every day, clear of interruptions. These hours of quietness
are our real life! It is these that make the ministerial life a grand
life. When we are shut in alone, and, the spirit having been silenced
and collected by prayer, the mind gets slowly down into the heart of a
text, like a bee in a flower, it is like heaven upon earth; it is as
if the soul were bathing itself in morning dews; the dust and fret are
washed off, and the noises recede into the distance; peace comes; we
move aloft in another world--the world of ideas and realities; the
mind mounts joyfully from one height to another; it sees the common
world far beneath, yet clearly, in its true meaning and size and
relations to other worlds. And then one comes down on Sabbath, to
speak to the people, calm, strong and clear, like Moses from the
mount, and with a true Divine message.

In so doing, my dear brother, thou shalt save thyself. Lose your inner
life, and you lose yourself, sure enough; for that _is_ yourself. You
will often have to tell your people that salvation is not the one act
of conversion, nor the one act of passing through the gate of heaven
at last; but the renewal, the sanctification, the growth, into large
and symmetrical stature, of the whole character. Tell that to yourself
often too. We take it for granted that you are a regenerated man, or
we would not have ordained you to be a minister of the Gospel to-day.
But it is possible for a man to be regenerate and to be a minister,
and yet to remain very worldly, shallow, undeveloped and unsanctified.
We who are your brethren in the ministry could tell sad histories in
illustration of this out of our own inner life. We could tell you how,
in keeping the vineyard of others, we have often neglected our own;
and how now, at the end of years of ministerial activity and incessant
toil, we turn round and look with dismay at our shallow characters,
our unenriched minds, and our lack of spirituality and Christlikeness.
O brother! take heed to thyself--save thyself!

II. _Take heed to the Doctrine._--A very little experience of
preaching will convince you that in relation to the truth which you
have to minister week by week to your people you will have to sustain
a double character--that of an interpreter of Scripture and that of a
prophet.

Let me first say something of the former. With whatever high-flown
notions a man may begin his ministry, yet, if he is to stay for years
in a place