Lowell has somewhere said that books are, at best, but dry fodder, and that we need to be vitalized by contact with living people. The best practical discourses often are those which a congregation help their minister to prepare. By constant and loving intercourse with the individuals of his church he becomes acquainted with their peculiarities, and this enlarges his knowledge of human nature. It is second only to a knowledge of God's Word. If a minister is a wise man (and neither God nor man has any use for fools) he will be made wiser by the lessons and suggestions which he can gain from constant and close intercourse with the immortal beings to whom he preaches. In Dundee, Scotland, I conversed with a gray-headed member of St. Peter's Presbyterian Church who, in his youth, listened to the sainted Robert Murray McCheyne. He spoke of him with the deepest reverence and love; but the one thing that he remembered after forty-six years was that Mr. McCheyne, a few days before his death, met him on the street and, laying hand upon his shoulder, said to him kindly: "Jamie, I hope it is well with your soul. How is your sick sister? I am going to see her again shortly." That sentence or two had stuck to the old Christian for over forty years. It had grappled his pastor to him, and this little narrative gave me a fresh insight into McCheyne's wonderful power. His ministry was most richly successful, and largely because he kept in touch with his people, and was a great pastor as well as a great preacher. I determined from the very start in my ministry that I would be a thorough pastor. A very celebrated preacher once said to me: "I envy you your love for pastoral work, I would not do it if I could, I could not do it if I would; for a single hour with a family in trouble uses up more of my vitality than to prepare a sermon." My reply to him was: "That may be true, but, after all, the business of a minister is to endure these strains upon his nervous system if he would be a comforter, as well as the teacher of his people."