And such a use was his. A bishop-elect, walking with him one day in
the country, was speaking, with not unnatural shrinking and hesitancy,
of the new work toward which he was soon to turn his face, and said
among other things, "I have a great dread, in the Episcopate, of
perfunctoriness. In the administration, especially, of confirmation,
it seems almost impossible, in connection with its constant
repetition, to avoid it."
He was silent a moment, and then said, "I do not think that it need be
so. The office indeed is the same. But every class is different; and
then--think what it is to them! It seems to me that that thought can
never cease to move one."
What a clear insight the answer gave to his own ministry. One turns
back to his first sermon, that evening when, with his fellow-student
in Virginia, he walked across the fields to the log-cabin where, not
yet in holy orders, he preached it, and where afterward he ministered
with such swiftly increasing power to a handful of negro servants.
"It was an utter failure," he said afterward. Yes, perhaps; but all
through the failure he struggled to give expression to that of which
his soul was full; and I do not doubt that even then they who heard
him somehow understood him.
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