Study is an oft-repeated injunction on the Christian ministry: "Meditate upon these things: give thyself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all" (1 Tim. iv. 15); "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Tim. ii. 15). The reasons for this are obvious. Knowledge is everywhere power. The ministry, from their position, are the natural leaders in religious thought. To command respect, they must be men of mental grasp and activity, and must be in advance of the thinking of those around them. Besides, no other profession is so heavily tasked for brain exertion. The Senate, the Bar, and the Platform only occasionally demand the highest efforts of the intellect. But the pulpit requires weekly its elaborate sermons. They must have freshness, originality, force, or the pastor loses his hold on the people. And this exhaustive drain on his resources continues steadily year after year. No man can meet such demands without constant, earnest study. He must be ever growing. His mental processes must be ceaselessly active, pushing into new realms of investigation, gathering new materials for thought, increasing his discipline, and making him a broader, richer, deeper man. In the life of a pastor two extremes are to be avoided. On the one hand, he is not to be a mere book-worm, secluded in his study, with no practical, living contact and sympathy with life around him. Some ministers of large literary culture have been comparatively useless from want of living connection between their thinking and the real needs of the busy actual world in which they lived. On the other hand, a minister may not be a mere desultory man, a gossip from house to house, occupied with newspapers and magazines, skimming the surface of popular thinking in ephemeral books that may attract his fancy, but neglecting the severer processes of self-culture essential to mental growth. Instability in the pastoral office is often a result of this. Freshness, originality in thought and expression, is lost, and the people, weary of repetitions and empty platitudes, cease to respect and love the pulpit. The grand object to be sought, then, is to combine the student and the pastor--a mind growing in knowledge and power by habitual work in the study and growing in executive ability and social force by constant activity in the church and contact with the people. To secure this there must be a system--a system wisely formed and steadily pursued. What shall this system be? In answering this I propose to pursue two lines of suggestion--the method of study and the subjects of study. FIRST, THE METHOD.