Do you so live, by His grace and mercy? Is the sitting-room and the bedroom of your curacy-lodging the place where you habitually hold intercourse in this holy simplicity with Him who has loved you and given Himself for you? Then I venture to say that all the more for this, by that same grace and mercy, you shall be enabled to "lay yourself out" for others, in your pastoral charge. You shall understand other men better, by thus securing for your own soul a deeper understanding of the Lord Jesus and a fuller sympathy (if the word is reverent) with Him. I hardly care to analyze how, but somehow, you shall more readily and closely "get at" men through this direct, simple, unofficial, unclerical drawing very near indeed to God in Christ. The more you know Him thus at _first-hand_ the more shall you understand alike the needs of the human heart (of which all individual hearts are but various instances), and the supplies that are laid up for all its needs in Him. And so you shall go out among your people armed, equipped, with a truly heaven-given sympathy and tact. True personal intercourse with the Lord, the very closest and deepest, is the very thing to open the whole man out for others, and to teach him how, with a loving intuition, to look into them and "upon their things." [Phil. ii. 4.] A HYMN. In the next Chapter I shall speak a little more about the young Clergyman's secret devotion, and secret study of the heavenly Word. But enough for the present. And let me close with the quotation of a hymn,[1] a new friend of mine, but already a very dear one, and thankfully added to the treasures of memory. It puts in the simplest form possible, while in a form most beautiful, the vital truth that "intercourse with God is the power for holy service." Happy the young Clergyman whose secret daily life, from its beginning in the "Morning Watch," on through the intercourse and energies of the day, up to the evening hour of weariness and repose, is a translation into experience of that blessed hymn. [1] By G.M. TAYLOR: _Hymns of Consecration and Faith_ (Second Edition), No. 349. "TELL HIM ALL." "When thou wakest in the morning, Ere thou tread the untried way Of the lot that lies before thee Through the coming busy day; Whether sunbeams promise brightness, Whether dim forebodings fall, Be thy dawning glad or gloomy, Go to Jesus--tell Him all! "In the calm of sweet communion Let thy daily work be done; In the peace of soul out-pouring Care be banish'd, patience won And if earth with its enchantments Seek thy spirit to enthral, Ere thou listen, ere thou answer-- Turn to Jesus--tell Him all! "Then, as hour by hour glides by thee, Thou wilt blessed guidance know; Thine own burthens being lighten'd, Thou canst bear another's woe; Thou canst help the weak ones onward; Thou canst raise up those that fall; But, remember, while thou servest, Still tell Jesus--tell Him all!