Thus prepared by secret and special intercourse with God, and recollecting some simple maxims about practical points, you go out into the parish. But no; let me suggest one other preliminary, which, before most rounds of pastoral visiting, cannot be out of place. You will take in your pocket _two books_, if not more; one, your visiting register and diary, the other--your Bible. Of the use to be made of the note-book I need not speak. About that to be made of the Book of God let me say a very few words.
I do not mean at all that you will make the reading of the Holy Scriptures a matter of form or routine; a thing which _must_ be done, as an _opus operandum_, wherever there is a chance. But I do mean that you should have the Book always ready for use, and be prompt to sow the "incorruptible seed" [1 Pet. i. 23.] from house to house as God gives opportunity. Remember, it is a Book sadly little known by the very large majority of your people; so that every natural and naturally-taken occasion to "let it speak," in private as well as in public, is a contribution to that urgent need of our modern world, Bible-knowledge. Remember again that, despite all the wretched unsettlements of belief amongst us, the Bible is still the Bible, for untold multitudes; it is owned by them, whether or no it is used, as the Oracle of God. Let us let the Book speak at the open ear of such a conviction, however dimly the conviction is entertained. And then remember that the Bible, whatever be the state of current opinion about it, _is_ as a fact the Oracle of God, and its immortal and life-conveying words have a mysterious fitness all their own to be the vehicle of the Spirit's voice to the human heart. Offer it, as often as you can, to be that vehicle.