The best practical discourses often are those which a congregation help their minister to prepare.

By constant and loving intercourse with the individuals of his church he becomes acquainted with their peculiarities, and this enlarges his knowledge of human nature.

It is second only to a knowledge of God's Word.

If a minister is a wise man (and neither God nor man has any use for fools) he will be made wiser by the lessons and suggestions which he can gain from constant and close intercourse with the immortal beings to whom he preaches.
In Dundee, Scotland, I conversed with a gray-headed member of St.
Peter's Presbyterian Church who, in his youth, listened to the sainted Robert Murray McCheyne.

He spoke of him with the deepest reverence and love; but the one thing that he remembered after forty-six years was that Mr.McCheyne, a few days before his death, met him on the street and, laying hand upon his shoulder, said to him kindly: "Jamie, I hope it is well with your soul.