His children thus most dear to Him,
   Their heavenly Father trains,
   Through all the hard experience led
   Of sorrows and of pains.

And if His children, then ten times more the tutors and governors of His children,—­the pastors and the preachers He prepares for His people.

2.  Again, though I will not put those two collegiate shepherds against one another, yet, in order to bring out the whole truth on this matter, I will risk so far as to say that where we cannot have both Knowledge and Experience, by all means let us have Experience.  Yes, I declare to you that if I were choosing a minister for myself, and could not have both the book-knowledge and the experience of the Christian life in one and the same man; and could not have two ministers, one with all the talents and another with all the experiences; I would say that, much as I like an able and learned sermon from an able and learned man, I would rather have less learning and more experience.  And, then, no wonder that such pastors and preachers are few.  For how costly must a thoroughly good minister’s experience be to him!  What a quantity and what a quality of experience is needed to take a raw, light-minded, ignorant, and self-satisfied youth and transform him into the pastor, the tried and trusted friend of the tempted, the sorrow-laden, and the shipwrecked hearts and lives in his congregation!  What years and years of the selectest experiences are needed to teach the average divinity student to know himself, to track out and run to earth his own heart, and thus to lay open and read other men’s hearts to their self-deceived owners in the light of his own.  A matter, moreover, that he gets not one word of help toward in all his college curriculum.  David was able to say in his old age that he fed the flock of God in Israel according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands.  But what years and years of shortcoming and failure in private and in public life lie behind that fine word ‘integrity’! as also what stumbles and what blunders behind that other fine word ‘skilfulness’!  But, then, how a lightest touch of a preacher’s own dear-bought experience skilfully let fall brightens up an obscure scripture!  How it sends a thrill through a prayer!  How it wings an arrow to the conscience!  How it sheds abroad balm upon the heart!  Let no minister, then, lose heart when he is sent back to the school of experience.  He knows in theory that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, but it is not theory, but experience, that makes a minister after God’s own heart.  I sometimes wish that I may live to see a chair of Experimental Religion set up in all our colleges.  I fear it is a dream, and that it must have been pronounced impracticable long ago by our wisest heads.  Still, all the same, that does not prevent me from again and again indulging my dream.  I indulge my fond dream again as often