Let us suppose that the pastor has fixed his hours and made them sacred to severe, thorough mental labor; what shall he study? I answer: Not his sermons only. A grave mistake is often made here. The whole time is devoted to sermon preparation, leaving no room for general culture, biblical investigation, or theological studies. As the result, the mind becomes empty and barren. It lacks material for thought. The man is perpetually pouring out, but never pouring in, and the vessel becomes empty. He faithfully grinds at the mill but puts nothing into the hopper. Some conscientious, hardworking thinkers in this way fail as preachers. They have no freshness. The mind runs perpetually in the same grooves and moves always in the same narrow circle, whereas, if they were reading, investigating, looking on subjects from new standpoints and receiving the mental impulses which contact with other thinkers gives, the mind would be ever growing, ever enriching itself, and the sermons would be full of fresh and interesting views of truth. Three objects are to be sought in the study: general culture, biblical and theological investigation, and sermon preparation. I. GENERAL CULTURE. By this I mean studies adapted to the development of the whole man. The pastor is not to be, in the narrow, technical sense, a mere theologian. He should seek to be a man of broad culture, developing his nature on every side and forming a full, symmetrical manhood. To accomplish this his studies must take a wide range, and open to him all those great realms of truth which science, philosophy, poetry, and history reveal. 1. _The sciences._ The pastor should not, indeed, turn aside from his sacred work to become a devotee to science. But in this age of scientific investigation, when the problems of science are so largely occupying public thought and so vitally touching the profoundest questions in religion, and the applications of science are so marvelously transforming our whole civilization and life, surely, at such a time, the man who stands up weekly to instruct the people, assuming to lead public thought, ought not to be ignorant of the results that science has reached, although he may not stop to pursue the processes of scientific inquiry. Astronomy, geology, botany, chemistry, each open a new world of truth, pouring light on the interpretation of God's Word and abounding in richest illustrations of the sacred themes of the pulpit. Standard works on these and related sciences are within the reach of every pastor, and even one on each of them, carefully read, would greatly enrich and enlarge his thinking.