The inertness you complain of in the ministry starts early.

Do you suppose that if Paul had spent seven years in a cheap boarding house, and the years after in a poorly-supplied parsonage, he would have made Felix tremble?
No! The first glance of the Roman procurator would have made him apologize for intrusion.
Do not think that all your eight-hundred-dollar minister needs is a Christmas present of an elegantly-bound copy of "Calvin's Institutes." He is sound already on the doctrine of election, and it is a poor consolation if in this way you remind him that he has been foreordained to starve to death.

Keep your minister on artichokes and purslain, and he will be fit to preach nothing but funeral sermons from the text "All flesh is grass." While feeling most of all our need of the life that comes from above, let us not ignore the fact that many of the clergy to-day need more gymnastics, more fresh air, more nutritious food.

Prayer cannot do the work of beefsteak.

You cannot keep a hot fire in the furnace with poor fuel and the damper turned..