also all that was bottomed in a strong English understanding.  Then, again, a good memory is indispensable to a minister of knowledge.  You must be content to take a second, a third, or even a lower place still if your Master has withheld from you a good memory.  Dr. Goodwin has a passage on this point that I have often turned up when I had again forgotten it.  ’Thou mayest have a weak memory, perhaps, yet if it can and doth remember good things as well and better than other things, then it is a sanctified memory, and the defilement of thy memory is healed though the imperfection of it is not; and, though thou art to be humbled for it as a misery, yet thou art not to be discouraged; for God doth not hate thee for it, but pities thee; and the like holds good and may be said as to the want of other like gifts.’  You cannot be a man of a commanding knowledge anywhere, and you must be content to take a very subordinate and second place, even in the ministry, unless you have both a good understanding and a good memory; but then, at the last day your Master will not call you and your congregation to an account for what He has not committed to your stewardship.  And on that day that will be something.  But not only must ministers of knowledge have a good mind and a good memory; they must also be the most industrious of men.  Other men may squander and kill their time as they please, but a minister had as good kill himself at once out of the way of better men unless he is to hoard his hours like gold and jewels.  He must read only the best books, and he must read them with the ‘pain of attention.’  He must read nothing that is not the best.  He has not the time.  And if he is poor and remote and has not many books, he will have Butler, and let him read Butler’s Preface to his Sermons till he has it by heart.  The best books are always few, and they must be read over and over again when other men are reading the ’great number of books and papers of amusement that come daily in their way, and which most perfectly fall in with their idle way of reading and considering things.’  And, then, such a minister must store up what he reads, if not in a good memory, then in some other pigeon-hole that he has made for himself outside of himself, since his Master has not seen fit to furnish him with such a repository within himself.  And, then, after all that,—­for a good minister is not made yet,—­understanding and memory and industry must all be sanctified by secret prayer many times every day, and then laid out every day in the instruction, impression, and comfort of his people.  And, then, that privileged people will be as happy in possessing that man for their minister as the sheep of Immanuel’s Land were in having Knowledge set over them for their shepherd.  They will never look up without being fed.  They will every Sabbath-day be led by green pastures and still waters.  And when they sing of the mercies of the Lord to them and to their children, and forget not all His benefits, among the best of their benefits they will not forget to hold up and bless their minister.