Let me again repeat it,
should it at any time stand with you between visiting a deathbed and
preparing for the pulpit, prepare for the pulpit.' I was immensely
impressed with that dying injunction when it was repeated to me, but I
have lived,--I do not say to put my preparation for the pulpit, such as
it is, second to my more pastoral work in my week's thoughts, but--to put
my visiting in the very front rank and beside my pulpit. 'We never were
accustomed to much visiting,' said my elders to me in their solicitude
for their young minister when he was first left alone with this whole
charge; 'only appear in your own pulpit twice on Sabbath: keep as much at
home as possible: we were never used to much visiting, and we do not look
for it.' Well, that was most kindly intended; but it was much more kind
than wise. For I have lived to learn that no congregation will continue
to prosper, or, if other more consolidated and less exacting
congregations, at any rate not this congregation, without constant
pastoral attention. And remember, I do not complain of that. Far, far
from that.
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