Above all, the pastor must remember the injunction, "Instant in season, out of season." He should make the most of opportunities. In the store, the office, and the shop, on the farm, the roadside, and the car--everywhere--he is to seek to lead men to Christ. Wisely, indeed, he will observe the proprieties of time and place, but he should neglect no real opportunity of conversing on vital personal religion. The care of souls is his life-work, his solemn charge, and concern for their salvation ought continually to reveal itself in his conversation. Especially must he seize on opportunities to speak the earnest, kindly word to the unconverted. Ordinarily, this is better done when alone with them, as they are then more accessible, and the appeal comes with greater power. The lack of this personal dealing with souls is one of the saddest defects than can mar the life of a minister. III. THE ADVANTAGES. The personal religious growth of the pastor is greatly aided by this direct contact with the souls of his charge. In a minister's life the danger is that he may degenerate into mere professionalism. He may come to study God's Word and its great truths, not with personal application, but with respect only to the preparation of his sermons and their application to the people. He may lose a vivid consciousness of his personal relations to God and read and think and pray with reference only to others. Many a pastor actually advancing in general knowledge of the Bible and in professional power as to the composition and delivery and mental richness of his sermons is, after all, only retrograding in his inner personal life as a Christian. But the direct contact with individual souls in pastoral visitation brings religion before him less as a theory, more as a living, personal reality. He deals here with religion in the concrete rather than the abstract. He is the witness of its actual power to comfort in sorrow, to strengthen in temptation, to guide in perplexity, to triumph in danger, and his own soul thus enters into a more full realization of it as a living fact. How often when seeking to guide another to Christ does he himself find new access to Him, or when administering consolation to a dejected, afflicted spirit do new courage and hope spring up in his own heart! It develops within him broader, purer sympathies and makes him a truer, nobler Christian.