lved in the words. What strikes me so
much in the letter is the manner in which St. Paul literally loves the
Church; how he longs to communicate his own enthusiasm to it; how he
would die, almost does die, himself to bring life to them. All his hopes
are bound up with theirs--his salvation with their salvation. He seems
to 'fail from out his blood, and grow incorporate' into them. We are
called to the same office as St. Paul, we have the same power working in
us as he had working in him: we too shall have success in so far as we
love--as we identify ourselves with those whom God has given us to take
care of. The more we are disciplined and yet enthusiastic, the more
capable shall we be of love--of getting out of self--of working our way
into others--of representing the Christ to them--of understanding and
making allowances for them--of seeing them in the ideal, the only real,
light in {95} which God sees them--seeing them in the Christ, in whom we
live--mind that, with all your intellectual training, you don't forget
the other. Now is the time to learn, to force yourself to learn, to
pray--to pray not for a few minutes at a time, but to pray for an hour at
a time--to get alone with yourself--to get alone with your Maker. We
shall not have to talk so much to others if we pray more for them. We
talk and we do not influence, or we influence only for a time, because
our lives are not more prayer-full.

_To J. L. D._

Aldeburgh House, Blackheath, S.E.: December 16, 1893.

I cannot help thinking of you both at this time. It means so much to you
both--more than either of you dreams that it means. The issues of your
Ordination day are very far reaching indeed. They stretch away and
beyond this world in which we now are. The rush of school work and of
preparation for examination has probably not left you as much time as you
could have wished for thinking over what it all means. I hope you will
have more time after the service is over. But you may be comforted in
the thought that the last few years have been a definite preparation for
your life-work. Though you must regret, as you never regretted before,
misuse of time and powers in the past, yet you have had an education
which has in some degree prepared you for this time, an education for
which you may thank our common Master. But this {96} thought by itself
would be but a small comfort. For you must feel, if you are the man I
take you for, how unworthy y