Still, all the
same, that does not prevent me from again and again indulging my dream. I
indulge my fond dream again as often as I look back on my own tremendous
mistakes in the management of my own personal and ministerial life, as
well as sometimes see some signs of the same mistakes in some other
ministers. In my dream for the Church of the future I see the programme
of lectures in the Experimental Class and the accompanying examinations.
I see the class library, and I envy the students. I am present at the
weekly book-day, and at the periodical addresses delivered to the class
by those town and country ministers who have been most skilful in their
pastorate and most successful in the conversion and in the character of
their people. And, unless I wholly deceive myself, I see, not all the
class--that will never be till the millennium--but here and there twos
and threes, and more men than that, who will throw their whole hearts
into the work of such a class till they come out of the hall in
experimental religion like Sir Proteus in the play:
Their years but young, but their experience old,
Their heads unmellowed, but their judgment ripe.
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