some. It has not seldom happened that men, for whom one could not but feel much respect, have, by giving way to this feeling, fallen into great confusion, and incurred the risk of nearly total failure. They have impaired their future usefulness by attempting to anticipate it. They could not believe that the discipline which lay before them was really connected with the office to which they were to be called, and so they failed in both. Zeal became self-will; self-will led to ignorance and narrowness. The student who would avoid failure must begin with trust, with the belief that those who teach him have considered well what he wants, with the purpose of throwing himself, with his whole heart and soul, into the work which he is told to do.

It is a solemn thing for us who are engaged in the work of teaching those who are themselves very shortly to be teachers of others, to watch the acts and words of those whom we have to train. Indications of character have here a wonderful, often a very awful significance. If a child is, as has been said, a prophecy of the man, most truly can we say that here the student of theology is a prophecy of the future pastor. If we see a man indolent, desultory, purposeless in his work with us, we cannot but fear that such an one, if he pass.

through the ordeals which are meant to check him,

will prove indolent, desultory, purposeless in his future work. His teaching in schools, his visits to the sick, his sermons and exhortations, will be gone through as a routine, with the least amount of labour, without earnestness, and therefore without a blessing. If we observe in another, even in small things, zeal without judgment, a rash and intrusive assertion of opinions hastily taken up and blindly defended, capricious singularities of manner or practice, do not these prophesy of one who will disturb the peace of a parish by wilful, unauthorized innovations? Are they not auguries of one whose work will not be that of the shepherds of Israel, but rather of those who devour the pasture, and disturb the still waters-of the correspondent of religious newspapers-the follower or the leader in a religious agitation? And all other failings, in like manner, are big with future evil. Hardness, flippancy, frivolity, irritability, want of clearness, want of method, an over-fondness for society, or a morbid shrinking from it, a will too yielding or too obstinate, all these which work evil in the life of the student, speak to us of the evil which, unless checked by God's help and favour, they will work in the life of the pastor.

Thanks be to God, brethren, we can say, as St. Paul did of those whom he taught, that 'we are persuaded better things of you, though we thus

speak.' It is cheering and encouraging to us to see, in what you now are, prophecies not of evil only or chiefly, but of good. Zeal, earnestness, obedience, affection, sympathy, gratitude, these we have been allowed to see already, and these we trust God will allow us to witness, ripened and developed, in you more and more. This day is one on which we are bound to give thanks for what has been, for the work in which we have been sharers. We see those round us of whom we believe and hope that they are true shepherds, who feed the flock of Christ, and are taking good heed to that awful charge, living with the abiding sense that they are servants of the Great Shepherd of the souls of men. We can begin with a good hope, for we believe that God is calling you to do His work. We are sure that if you hear and obey that call, He, the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls, will lead you in and out where you may pasture. We believe that He is inviting you and us now to His table, that His cup of blessing is filled for us, that those who trust in Him shall find goodness and mercy following them all the days of their life.

find

XX.

OTHER

MEN'S LABOURS.1

'Herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth.'

TH

JOHN IV. 37.

HESE words contain, I believe, a lesson especially adapted for this opening service

of ours.

They declare a truth which no man can lose sight of with impunity, and yet one which, if we may judge from our own experience and the common language of men who write about the ministerial office, we are constantly in danger of forgetting, and practically denying. We may be quite sure, at all events, that all words spoken by Him who was our Teacher and Guide in this ministerial work, bearing, as these evidently do bear, upon it, must contain some living and lifegiving truths. They must needs add to what we learn from other truths. Any neglect of them must be attended with some falling away from the completeness to which He has called us, and cause

1 Preached at the Annual Meeting of Theological Associates and Students, King's College, London, 1849.

us to see our work less clearly and do it less perfectly. The very words, too, call to our mind at once all those illustrations from the outward life of nature, and the labours of men connected with it, by which the Lord was wont to set forth the laws of His kingdom. Nowhere do we find that analogy of the sower and the seed, without its leading us, if we follow its guidance, to depths and heights of truth, of which before we had hardly even dreamt. It cannot be but that these words also contain a wisdom which will be very precious to those who seek, and, by seeking, find it. And yet how little, compared with other illustrations from like objects, has this become familiar to men's minds, and incorporated with their daily speech. The few labourers for the plenteous harvest; the intermingling of the wheat and the tares ; the highway, and the stony places, and the thorns, and the good ground; the seed springing up till it becomes the greatest of herbs, and the birds of heaven lodge in the branches of it,—all these have become proverbial. We can scarcely write or speak of the life of the Church without using them. Whenever we think of the work of missions, or of distributing Bibles, or of teaching in schools, they occur to us immediately. If we had to speak on such subjects, they would probably be among the first words we should utter. And it is right and