Safeguarding Confidences

It is well for the physician to deliver public addresses, making plain cer­tain general principles that have to do with health; but that does not sat­isfy the individual in the audience who is suffering from some specific malady. That person needs to come into indi­vidual contact with the physician, and have his difficulty analyzed in a per­sonal way.

Likewise, there are hundreds in. every community who are sick at heart, who are wrestling with some problem in their experience, and who long for a personal application of the gospel in their individual cases. These do not need so much to be exhorted from the desk, as they need the prayers and counsel of the minister who has dis­covered the wonderful opportunities wrapped up in personal work, and who has, as a result of that discovery, learned how to give his very best in the effort to win souls one by one.

It is highly important that the minis­ter who would be successful in per­sonal soul winning, shall be a person in whom men and women can place their confidence without hesitation. In personal work, one must treat as sacred all confidences, never referring to them either in conversation or in the pulpit.

We need ever to remember that the minister does either strong work or weak work largely in proportion to his strength or weakness as a personal worker. No matter how eloquent he may be on the public platform, no mat­ter how well he may preach the truth, if he fails ^-to supplement his public efforts with strong work at the hearth, he will rarely be successful in bringing many people over the deciding line. It is at the fireside, in the home, while engaged in personal soul winning, that the most important work is done. There, the one worked for has oppor­tunity to ask questions and to open up personal problems, which must have careful consideration before he is pre­pared to take his stand for the truth.

Furthermore, no minister knows how to preach most effectively to a congregation until he first comes into personal contact with the members of that congregation, and as a result, discovers their real needs.

Chattanooga, Tenn.