search for the lives of others.'"

I dare to say that this quotation contains no mere "counsels of
perfection," but principles which are indispensable for the Minister of
Jesus Christ who would be not only reputable, popular, and in the
superficial sense of the word successful, but--what his dear Master
would have him be for His work. And the blessed spirit it suggests and
exemplifies is a thing which cometh not in "but by prayer" and by at
least such fasting as takes the shape of a most watchful secret
self-discipline. When von Machtholf speaks of "never depending on
previous prayers" it is obvious what he means; not that prayer should
not precede work, but that nothing should satisfy the worker short of a
living and present trust in a living and present Lord. But that trust is
the very thing which is developed, and prepared, and matured, in the
life of genuine secret intercourse, in which the Lord is dealt with as
man dealeth with his friend, and gazed upon and (I may reverently say)
studied in His revealed Character, till the disciple does indeed "know
_whom_ he has believed," "who He is that he should believe on Him." "My
soul shall be satisfied ... when I remember Thee, when I meditate on
Thee, in the night watches," [2 Tim. i. 12; John ix. 36; Ps. lxiii. 5,
6.] aye, and in the Morning Watch also.

URGENT PRESENT NEED TO MAINTAIN SECRET DEVOTION.

I know not how to get away from this subject; not only because of its
intense connexion with the most blissful experiences of the believing
soul, but because of its unspeakably important bearing on the work of
the Ministry, the Ministry of our own time and of my reader's own
generation. Never was there a period when the cry for enterprize and
practical energy was louder; and God knows there is occasion enough for
the cry, and for the answering resolve. But never was there a time when
the need was greater to distinguish true from false secrets of energy,
and to be content with nothing short of the deepest and most divine as
our ultimate secret. Do you not well know what I mean? Is there not far
and wide in the "Christian world"--I do not speak now of the exterior
regions of avowed scepticism or indifference--a tendency to merge the
whole idea of religion in that of philanthropic benevolence, and thereby
to draw inevitably the idea of philanthropy downward in the end into its
least noble manifestations? Is it not a fashionable thing to regard the
Christian Ministry, for