Let him go to the business men of his congregation when they have suffered reverses, and give them a word of cheer; let him be quick to recognize the poor and the children, and he will weave a cord around the hearts of his people that will stand a prodigious pressure.

His inferior sermons (for every minister is guilty of such occasionally) will be kindly condoned, and he can launch the most pungent truths at his auditors, and they will not take offense.

He will have won their hearts to himself, and that is a great step toward drawing them to the house of God and winning their souls to the Saviour.

"A house-going minister," said Chalmers, "makes a church-going people." There is still one other potent argument for close intercourse with his congregation that many ministers are in danger of ignoring or underestimating.

James Russell Lowell has somewhere said that books are, at best, but dry fodder, and that we need to be vitalized by contact with living people.