Bible Believing Fundamentalist

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ON THE MINISTRY

FOUR DISCOURSES

THE DUTIES

A MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL

BY THOMAS COKE, LL. D.

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PREFACE

The work of the ministry must be acknowledged, by all who believe the

truths of revelation, and hope for happiness beyond the grave, to be the

most important in which a human being can possibly engage. It extends, in

its effects and consequences, beyond the boundaries of time, and involves

the future happiness or misery of millions, by leading them to felicities or

woes which baffle all our calculations.

The political decisions of senates may afflict nations with calamity, or

deliver them from it; but the good and evil which they administer must

terminate with the present life. It is not so with the ministry of the gospel.

The effects which result from the pious or unfaithful labors of those who

act as ambassadors for God, may, indeed, be perceived in every stage of

human probation; but they will appear more conspicuous as life draws

toward a close: — they will remain unextinguished at death, and assume, in

eternity, a visible and permanent form. The man who engages in this

solemn work is not merely accountable to God for his own soul, but

becomes responsible also for the souls of those who have been committed

to his care. The sacred writings have guarded his office with the most awful

sanctions. Both promises and threatenings conspire to keep alive his hopes

and fears, by holding out, in the most pointed language, the rewards or

punishments which await him in a future world. On the one hand, we are

assured that “they who turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars

for ever and ever;” while, on the other, we are clearly informed that “those

watchmen who see the sword coming, and neglect to give the people

warning, shall have their blood required at their hands.”

Impressed with these momentous realities, the author of these discourses,

having at an early period of life undertaken the sacred task, turned his

thoughts to an examination of the various duties which became his station.

In this survey he saw them to be both numerous and diversified, blending

and incorporating themselves with every department of life and he was soon

convinced that nothing but a strict attention to these varied connections,

could preserve that consistency of character which should always

distinguish the heralds of everlasting peace. With an eye to this end,

occasional incidents became his monitors; — real life furnished him with

many instructive lessons; and experience and practice have since confirmed

him in his adherence to obligations which were first adopted from principle.

These discourses may, therefore, be considered as the result of practical

observation, rather than of learned inquiry; and of real experience, rather

than of deep reflection.

But, though the author turned his attention to this subject in the manner that

has been hinted, and for reasons that have been assigned, he had no desire

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to publish his thoughts to the world. This originated in another

circumstance.

Having been called upon, occasionally, to preach before the Methodist

conferences, where the great bodies of preachers belonging to the

connection were assembled, he could not but express his ideas of the nature

of the gospel ministry, and advert to the duties which should be sustained,

by all those who conscientiously engage to preach Christ and him crucified.

The approbation with which his views were received, particularly in

America, induced many who heard his observations to solicit their

publication; from a persuasion that they might prove as useful in the closet

as they had been satisfactory to those who had received them from the

pulpit.

These importunities he, however, for a long time withstood; till, in crossing

the Atlantic Ocean on one of his voyages, the pages now presented to the

reader assumed nearly their present form, undergoing such amendments

and corrections, and receiving such additions, as were thought necessary to

prepare them for the public eye. A train of favorable circumstances

concurred during the voyage to facilitate the completion of the author’s

undertaking. He was secluded from the world, — had nothing to fear from

interruption, — was going on a ministerial errand, and had with him the

works of some French authors, particularly those of M. Massillon, the

pious bishop of Meaux, whose views on the subject were congenial with

his own.

Thus circumstanced, he began to arrange his thoughts; but found, as he

proceeded, that what he had originally compressed into a single discourse,

actually branched itself into four; no part of which he could possibly

retrench without doing injustice to a subject that he was endeavoring to

elucidate, or rejecting that assistance of which he was anxious to avail

himself. In years that are past, he trusts that these sermons have been

rendered a blessing to many; and, as truth is not to be impaired by age, he

has reason to hope that their republication will continue to be attended with

the divine blessing. This is his primary inducement to send a new

impression of them into the world. He feels confidence that the leading

features of the ministerial character and duties are delineated agreeably to the

doctrines of the gospel, as he endeavored in every part to take the prophets

and apostles for his guides. Relying, therefore, on the promises of Him

who has declared that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his church,

he commits this little book to the world, with an earnest hope that God will

make it a blessing to many souls.

That the united exertions of all who faithfully labor in the patience and

tribulation of Jesus may lead to the universal spread of the gospel, till a

nation shall be born in a day, and till all shall know God, from the least

unto the greatest, is the sincere desire and earnest prayer of

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MAY 24, 1810.DISCOURSE 1

“I charge thee, therefore, before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ,

who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his

kingdom; preach the word; be instant in season, out of season;

reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. For the

time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after

their own lusts shall the heap to themselves teachers, having itching

ears; and they shall turn ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto

fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work

of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry,”

PART 1

which is exercised on earth for, according to the order of the dispensation

of grace, the preaching of the gospel is indispensably necessary to raise

mankind out of the ruins of their fall, to deliver them from all the miseries

which spring from an everlasting banishment from God, and to bring them

to the eternal enjoyment of Him, the Sovereign Good, at whose right hand

are pleasures for evermore.

The ministers of the gospel are particularly charged with these high interests

of mankind: they are like those angels whom Jacob beheld on the sacred

ladder, ascending and descending to and from heaven: they are the mouth of

the congregation at the throne of God, and open the bosom of His mercies

upon the miseries of man. They officially speak in the name of Christ,

whom the Father always hears.

can bestow upon a people: it is the greatest he ever did bestow, except the

gifts of his Son and of his Spirit. What were the peculiar blessings which

the Lord promised by his prophets to the Israelites, if they would turn to

him, and obey his laws? Were they not the conquest of nations the entire

destruction of their enemies, the final period of all the miseries and

calamities which afflicted them, and a country which flowed with milk and

honey for their own habitation? These were the magnificent promises he

made them; and yet they prevailed not upon them to yield obedience to the

divine law, nor restrained them from prostituting their homage to the gods

of the heathen. He then ceased to press upon them these promises, which

were so flattering, and so likely to operate on the minds of a people who in

general were influenced by worldly motives; but it was to make them one

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promise more which was a thousand times greater and more precious than

all the rest:

“Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord, and I will give you

pastors accord in to mine heart, which shall feed you with

faithful pastors according to thine heart; and particularly call forth from our

connection chosen vessels to carry the savor of Christ’s name to all people;

and, in separating them for the work of the ministry, separate them also for

the sanctification of those to whom they may be sent. We do not so much

request the end of any trials or calamities which afflict us; we ask not

favorable seasons, abundance, or prosperity; we only request a sufficiency

of holy ministers who will die by thy cause, and with them thou wilt give

us all things else.”

be surprised at the awfulness of the charge which the apostle, in my text,

gives to Timothy, his spiritual son: “I charge thee before God,” the

omnipotent Jehovah, who sees and marks every word and action of our

lives, who tries the heart and reins; from whom no covert can screen us, no

darkness hide us; “but the night shineth as the day; the darkness and the

Lord Jesus Christ,” your Redeemer, who shed his blood for you, and for

the souls intrusted to your care: before Him whose minister you are, and to

whom you must account for the use or abuse of all your talents: before Him

“who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom:”

before whose awful bar you must stand in the presence of an assembled

universe, when he shall appear on his throne with all the splendor and glory

of the King of kings, to establish the eternal reign of his saints, and to

banish all evil ones, and all evil, from the glory of his power for ever: when

thou, O Timothy, shalt receive the exceeding great reward of thy faithful

ministry, or the greater condemnation which awaits the abuse of the most

precious gifts which can be intrusted to man.

Let us now proceed to the particulars of the apostle’s charge, omitting to

enlarge upon the reasons which he gives in the 3d and 4th verses, as they

primarily respect the people, and would lead us into too large a field of

discourse.

the soul. You are not ignorant, my brethren, what multitudes of immortal

beings have been brought by this divine word “from darkness to light, and

from the power of Satan unto God.” In those happy moments when a

whole congregation has been softened by this quickening fire, and the

hearts of the people all opened to receive the word, a single expression has

pierced to the quick, and produced its full effect. hundreds of thousands in

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the course of the present revival have been enlightened by it, and have been

undeceived concerning the abuses and pernicious maxims of the world,

which they once thought innocent, because authorized by the common

usage of mankind, or by the preaching of blind guides. Innumerable have

been the profanations and disorders which have been prevented; and

innumerable the precious souls which have been drawn out of the abyss of

misery and sin in which they had so long lain. It is impossible for any but

God to number of the cries of compunction which have arisen from

awakened hearts, or the holy desires inspired into them. Scores of

thousands have been brought to God, and established in grace, who either

have been safely lodged in Abraham’s bosom, or are now living witnesses

of Christ’s power to save. It is impossible to enumerate the graces and

blessings which have been conferred upon the world, and especially from

these kingdoms, by the means of the present revival. Surely it may be said

of every faithful minister, as it was of his Lord, that “he is set for the rising

engaged, can do in the course of his life by a faithful ministry of the word,

is not easily to be described. How many of the ignorant he may instruct,

how many sleepy consciences arouse, how many daring sinners confound;

how many mourners he may bring into the liberty of the children of God,

how many believers confirm in grace, yea, lead into the enjoyment of

perfect love! Blessed be the Lord, we have had our ministers, who were

formed according to the model of Jesus Christ, according to his simplicity,

eloquence, and by the power of the Spirit of God, who spoke through

them. The villages, the towns, the cities, could not resist the impetuosity of

their zeal, and the eminent sanctity of their lives; the tears, the sighs, and the

deep compunction of those who heard them, were the commendations

which accompanied their ministry. The strictness of their manners left

nothing for the world to say against the truths which they delivered. The

simplicity of their spirit, and the gentleness of their conversation and

conduct toward others but severity toward themselves, belied not the gospel

of which they were ministers. Their examples instructed, persuaded, and

struck the people almost as much as their sermons: and the Spirit of God,

who inflamed their hearts, the divine fire with which they themselves were

filled, spread itself through the coldest and most insensible souls; and

enabled them almost everywhere to raise chapels, temples to God, where

the penitents and believers might assemble to hear them, and each return

inflamed like themselves, and filled with the abundance of the Spirit of

God. O what good is one apostolic man capable of working upon earth!

There were no more than twelve employed to begin the conversion of the

world.

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Elisha, was designed as a type of Jesus Christ; who, after he had ascended

to the right hand of the Father, sent down on his disciples that spirit of zeal

and of fire which was the seal of their mission; by which they were to set

on fire and purify the world, and carry to all nations the knowledge of

salvation and the love of truth and righteousness. Scarcely are they thus

filled with the Holy Spirit, but these men, before so timid, so careful to hide

themselves, to withdraw themselves from the fury of the Jews, leave their

retreat like generous lions, know danger no more, bear in their countenance

an intrepidity in the way of duty which sets at defiance all the powers of the

earth, boldly bear their testimony for Christ before the assembly of chief

priests, and depart from the council, rejoicing to be thought worthy to

suffer reproach for Jesus’ holy name.

city to city, from nation to nation; they spread themselves to the extremities

of the earth; they attack the most ancient and most authorized abuses; they

tear away from the most barbarous people the idols which their ancestors

had at all times adored. They overturn the altars which continual incense

and homage had rendered respectable; they preach up the reproach and

foolishness of the cross to the most polished nations, who piqued

themselves most upon their eloquence, philosophy, and wisdom. The

obstacles which all things present to their zeal, instead of abating it, only

give it new force, and seem everywhere to announce their success: the

whole world conspires against them, and they are stronger than the world:

crosses and gibbets are shown them, to put a stop to their preaching; and

they answer that they cannot but declare what they have seen and heard; and

they publish on the housetops what was confided to them in secret: they

now expire under the axe of the executioner: new torments are invented to

extinguish with their blood the new doctrine which they preach; and their

blood preaches it still more after their death; and the more the earth is

watered with it, the more does she bring forth new disciples to the gospel.

Such was the spirit of the ministry and apostleship which they received, for

these are in some sense but one and the same: every minister of the gospel

is an apostle and ambassador of Jesus Christ among men. O that God

would increase the number of those who are willing to preach and to die for

Jesus Christ! “Preach,” then, “the word.”

“Be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all

longsuffering and doctrine.”

dangers to which your zeal will expose you; but it is this fear, which,

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through grace, will support you under them: we cannot fill our office with

fidelity and safety without possessing much of this holy, filial fear. You

think yourself unworthy of a ministry so holy and so glorious; but it is this

sentiment itself which makes you evangelically worthy of it. No one can

exercise it in a manner worthy of God, who does not feel himself extremely

unworthy of it. You have a taste perhaps for retirement; but is this the taste

or the rule which should determine your duties? Are you become a public

minister, that you should live to yourself alone? indeed, your taste for

retirement, if properly used, and duly restrained, will, under the blessing of

God, assure the success of your public labors. Perhaps you are diffident

concerning your gifts; but is it not a great gift to possess an ardent desire for

the salvation of souls? With a heart penetrated and inflamed by this desire, a

minister will always succeed; it is in some degree a substitute for other

talents: what shall I say? It forms them in him. Whereas, with the most

shining talents, without this tender love for souls, this apostolic zeal, we are

but sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. Only put yourselves into the

hands of those who are appointed to govern; they will employ you

according to your gifts and strength; it is not in you that in this instance it

appertains to judge. Blessed be the Lord, the field is various; they will find

out for you the place which suits you; and if nature has not bestowed on

you all the powers of oratory, the grace of God, and the spirit of the

missionary, will give you every thing necessary.

whatever be our views, we are essentially wrong if we suffer them to lead

us out of the path of duty or the order of our station. We are commanded to

“be instant in season, out of season:” a minister, therefore, must perish in

the inutility of a life of retirement and repose; the duties of his ministry, and

the wants of the church of God, permit him not to enjoy them. “Nothing is

more opposed,” says St. Chrysostom, “to the spirit of the ministry to which

the church of Christ has joined us, than a quiet and retired life, which many

erroneously regard as the kind of life the most sublime and perfect.” No,

my brethren, nothing is safe for us but that which God requires of us. True

devotion is not the work of human taste and caprice; it is a divine gift, and

always in the order of God. The distrust of ourselves is a great virtue when

it makes us more attentive to the fulfillment of our duties; but it is an

illusion, a vice, when it draws us from them.

to mind the different sources from whence arises the defect of zeal in

ministers of the gospel. Indeed, we cannot too often set them before our

eyes; for they are the poisoned fountains from whence flow all the evils of

the church of Christ.

The first is, the love of this world and its conveniences: no sooner does

every thing commodious in the present life offer its tempting baits, but with

too many that fire of zeal, that flame of love for the salvation of souls,

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vanishes away like the morning dew, to the astonishment of the discerning

beholder.

The second is, a defect of the love of God: it must be nearly extinguished in

our hearts, if we can daily behold the disorders and infidelity which

continually dishonor the name and holy religion of our God, without

embracing the most effectual method, if we be really called to the ministry

of the word, to stem the torrent.

The third is, a defect of love to mankind: for can those who are chosen of

God to the great work of snatching immortal spirits out of the burning, love

them, an yet calmly see them perish?

The fourth is, such a respect for men as makes us seek their friendship and

esteem at the expense of truth; I mean that baseness of spirit which ties our

tongues before them, and makes us prefer our own glory and our own

interests to the love of Christ and the interests of his church. Fortitude,

disinterestedness, a holy generosity, a wise and heroic firmness, are the

constant fruits of the true ministerial grace and office; and if these

sentiments be effaced from the heart of a minister, the grace of his vocation

is utterly extinct.

The fifth is, the indulgence of some secret vice; for what true zeal can that

preacher have against the vices of the world, who indulges himself in any

secret sin?

The sixth is, a dull, lukewarm spirit: zeal is a holy fervor, which gives its

first attention to ourselves. Alas! he who can indulge in himself a stupid,

lethargic spirit, will make but a miserable reprover of the deadness of

devotion which he observes in others.

The seventh, and last, is a timid and misinformed piety. Some refuse to

devote themselves. wholly to the work of the ministry, or give it up when

they have entered upon it, through a pious delusion. They make piety itself

a pretext to dispense with the rules of piety: they are afraid to lose their own

souls; but they are not afraid to lose the souls of those whom they are called

of God to be the instruments of saving. They believe they ought to fly from

those dangers to which the order of God, and of the church to which they

belong, calls them: and this flight is the only danger of which they are

ignorant, and yet the greatest they have to fear.

irreprehensible: it is not sufficient to lead a prudent and regular life before

the eyes of the world: if we be not penetrated with a lively sorrow at seeing

the lost estate of the souls around us; if we do not arm ourselves with the

seal of faith and love, and with that sword of the Spirit which is the word of

God, to bring them out of their ways of error; if we do not exhort them

“with all longsuffering and doctrine;” if we be not “instant in season and out

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of season”; if we content with our own fancied righteousness, we imagine

ourselves safe in reproving and rebuking by our examples, or, like old Eli,

in only softly condemning the vice of others; our pretended virtue or

holiness, indolent, inactive, lethargic, is a crime, an abomination before

God: we feel not ourselves charged with the interests of God upon earth;

we live only for ourselves; we are no more ambassadors of Jesus Christ;

we are easy, useless spectators of the reproaches cast upon him and his

holy religion; and, by our silence and insensibility, consent to the crimes,

and are partakers of the guilt, of those who crucify him afresh. No, my

brethren let us not deceive ourselves; for, as I have already said, and must

repeat again, however well regulated the life of such a minister may seem,

he has but the appearance of piety; he has not the foundation and truth of it:

he seems to live, but he is dead in the sight of God: men perhaps may praise

him, but God curses him: the regularity of his life now lulls him to sleep;

but a terrible sound, and the clamors of the souls which he has suffered to

perish, shall one day awaken him thoroughly: he calms his mind, because

he bears a cold, dry testimony in favor of evangelical truths; or because he

compares the regularity of his life with that of many others called ministers;

but he shall one day see that his righteousness was but that of a Pharisee,

and shall in the end be ranked with the hypocrites and unprofitable servants,

upon earth, to enlarge his kingdom, to advance the building of his eternal

city for him to see the reign of the devil prevail over that of Jesus Christ in

the place or places where he labors; and his faith, his love, his pretended

piety to suffer him to be quiet and at rest! Can a minister of the gospel hear

the name of Jesus, and the truth as it is in him whose place he fills, and

whom he professes to love and honor, daily derided or denied by word or

deed, and not be filled with zeal for the cause of his great Master so

opposed! What shall I say? Certainly he would speak with the authority

which the dignity of his office always gives him, and endeavor to inspire

sentiments more worthy of religion in those perverse, corrupted men: or he

would be a base coward, a prevaricator, a minister who betrayed his

ministry, if a criminal insensibility, or a carnal or timid prudence, could on

such occasions shut his mouth; and he all this time believe himself innocent

of the blood of souls! Can a faithful shepherd see his sheep precipitate

themselves into the abyss without running after them, and making them at

least to hear his voice? Nay, when a single sheep had wandered, he would

traverse the mountains, and endure the most painful toils, to bring it back

described is not a shepherd, not a minister of Jesus Christ; I reclaim the

name; he is a usurper, who falsely bears that honorable title; and,

notwithstanding all his profession, has willfully made himself a vessel of

reprobation and shame, placed in the temple of God!

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responsible only for the societies under his care. The objector must certainly

have forgotten, or never have read, the rules of a preacher, which we have

all so solemnly promised to obey. The eleventh runs thus: — “You have

nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work;

and go always not only to those that want, but to those that want you most.

Observe! It is not your business only to preach so many times, and to take

care of this or that society, but to save as many souls as you can; to bring as

many sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and, with all your power,

to build them up in that holiness without which they cannot see the Lord.”

PART 2

should upon all occasions support the holy dignity of our calling. The most

accustomary familiarities of the world, the discourses of pleasantry the most

entertaining, are for us real indecencies: all that is unworthy of our ministry

is at all times unworthy of us. Some ministers persuade themselves that it is

necessary to accommodate themselves to the taste, the language, and

maxims of the world, that they may not appear bad or morose company: but

remember, my brethren, a minister is never in his place while he suits the

taste of the world; never, unless he be what is called bad company for the

world. From the time that the world seeks him, adopts him, associates with

him, and is pleased with his company, he gives a certain proof that he

respects not the propriety and decency which should invariably accompany

his office. And we may continually observe, that those ministers whom the

world seeks, whom the world applauds, and with whose company the

world in general is delighted, are carnal men, who have reserved nothing of

their holy vocation but the name: the spirit of the world shows itself in their

whole exterior deportment; it discovers itself in the impropriety of their

dress, in the lightness of their conversation, and even of their walk: nay,

often in the little true gravity and sanctity manifested in the performance of

their public duties. “If ye were of the world” says Christ, “the world would

love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you

brethren, the men of the world seek not the company of a holy and

respectable minister; nor is he desirous of associating with them. It is when

they want consolation under affliction: it is when the approaches of death

make them feel themselves near to eternity: ah! it is then they have recourse

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to a holy minister; they then regard not those of whom they were before so

fond; they are then conscious that such ministers can be of no service to

them; that they may be good for the things of the world, but are useless as

to the things of heaven. Depend on it, my brethren, it always costs us

something of the dignity and holy gravity of our office to purchase the

friendship and suffrages of men of the world: it is not they who will abate

of their prejudices and false maxims to unite themselves to us; it is we only

who must abate of the holy rules of the gospel to be admitted to their

societies. Let us, then, never lay down before the eyes of the men of the

world the holy gravity of our vocation, or the due and respectable

appearance of a minister of Jesus Christ: let them not be able to distinguish

between the minister in the pulpit and the minister in his usual commerce

with mankind. Let them find him throughout the same; throughout

respecting his character, and making it respectable to others; throughout

discovering the spirit of piety, yea, even by his presence alone.

the customs of the world justify, we have a right to condemn them. If the

people of the world, whether rich or poor, indulge themselves before us in

such discourses as are but too common, and which offend either piety,

Christian love, or modesty, our character authorizes us to reprove them.

Nor will the world in general find fault with us, if we endeavor to sanctify

their conversations with pious, edifying remarks; for, as it is somewhere

observed in the Apocrypha, the Lord has dispersed us among the Gentiles,

among the people of the world, who know not God, that we may make

known the wonders of his holy law. No, my brethren, it does not become a

good minister to depart from the company of the people of the world,

without having mixed with their discourse some spiritual and edifying

reflections. When a minister is duly touched with the truths he preaches;

when he daily meditates upon them at the footstool of the throne; when he is

penetrated with an ardent, holy desire for the salvation of souls, it will be

difficult for him to see them wonder and perish, without at least

complaining to them, without taking occasion from their errors and

prejudices to say to them some word of salvation. And how know you, but

a simple and edifying reflection, delivered at a time when he expects it not,

may become to your brother a word of eternal life? He may be on his guard

if he hear you in public, and come prejudiced against the truths you are

delivering; but in a familiar conversation, truth takes the sinner unawares.

Candor, meekness, and simplicity, with the grace of God, will sometimes,

in private discourse, give to a truth, when least looked for, a strength which

it would not otherwise have. The unforeseen arrow is the most sure to reach

its mark. At least, you have done honor to your ministry, and been faithful

to that command of God, “Be ye holy in all manner of conversation.”

it cursorily. But, considering the magnitude of it, and how seldom it has

been fully treated, I afterward determined to enlarge. And need I here

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remind you, brethren, of that peculiar characteristic of the Methodists, that

they are a race of reprovers. It is their reproach, it is their honor, it is the

glory of the cross they bear, that every Christian, of every sect and party,

who dares to become a reprover of vice, is immediately stigmatized with the

name of Methodist. May we never lose that cross, that glory, till vice is

banished from the world, and “the earth is full of the knowledge of the

Lord, us the waters cover the sea!”

shall often expose the truth to the contempt and derision of those to whom

we speak?” No, my brethren. A dissipated worldly preacher, I allow, could

but with an ill grace introduce observations of a spiritual nature into the

conversations of people of the world. He has by his vain conduct lost his

right. He would render himself ridiculous indeed, if he should labor to

recall to the minds of others truths which he himself appears to have

forgotten. The doctrines of piety would blush in his mouth; he would be

heard with contempt; and might be asked with a sneer, “Is Saul also among

gives respectability to all his wise and edifying counsels; the men of the

world themselves will grant him attention, and, even if tired, will not be

surprised; they may reject the truth, but must in secret esteem him who

declares it.

I grant that this duty, as well as every thing else, should be guided by

Christian prudence. Christian love, which only desires to be useful, labors

to find out the most opportune moments; and many such will present

themselves in the course of the useless conversations of the men of the

world. They speak together of their affairs, their projects, their

embarrassments, their subjects of complaint against their enemies or

competitors, of their disappointments, and of their misfortunes. Now,

cannot the Spirit of God, which actuates a holy minister, find in all this

innumerable occasions to deplore the sad and agitated life of those who love

the world; to describe to them the peace, the sweetness, the consolations of

a holy Christian life; and to mourn over them, as enjoying no genuine

happiness in the present life, but preparing for themselves in this world a

thousand disturbances, a thousand pains, and misery eternal in the next?

offending should be entirely banished. A minister of the gospel is a public

character, charged with the interests of the glory of God, and the honor of

religion, among men: he ought, therefore, never to suffer men of the world,

whoever they may be, to pass without a bold, though holy, reproof, when

the respect due to the majesty of God is wounded, when the precious and

sublime doctrines of the gospel are treated with derision, when vice is

justified, or holiness and virtue turned into ridicule: in short, when

licentiousness or impiety in discourse dishonors the presence of God and

the presence of his ministers. Ah! it is then that the piety and dignity of a

15

minister should no more prescribe to him any other measure or bounds but

that of zeal — the zeal which is the flame of love, mixed with the just

indignation of a lover of God. It is then that, charged by his office with the

interests of religion, he should know no one after the flesh; he should forget

the names, the titles, the distinctions of those who forget themselves; he

should remember that he is appointed of God a preacher of righteousness,

and endued with power from heaven to oppose all manner of sin: and,

especially, to set himself with a sacred intrepidity against that impious and

detestable pride which would exalt itself against the knowledge of God.

Whatever persons they be who do not treat with respect in your presence

that which is the most respectable of all things in the universe, should not

be respected by you: we ought to hear them with that kind of indignation

with which we believe Christ himself would have heard them. I am

persuaded that the pointed strength of reproof is the only kind of propriety

which our character then imposes upon us; We are not then required to use

soft expressions, “Nay, my son, it is no good report that I hear.” Whether

they will hear, or whether they will forbear, we should deliver our own

souls.

It is esteemed honorable by the world to support the interests of a friend

pointedly and boldly, if he be insulted in our presence. Have we then at

such a time a right to impose silence with firmness on the calumniator?

Shall we not disgrace ourselves, and be accounted treacherous, yea, base

and dastardly cowards, if we can suffer our friends to be abused in our

presence without undertaking their defense? And shall we not have the same

zeal to stop the mouth of the impious, and support aloud the interests of

Jesus Christ? Can we imagine that we are his friends, according to that

saying of our Lord, “Henceforth, I call you not servants, but I have called

which that tender and honorable title requires, by dissembling, — by

contenting ourselves with strengthening through our dastardly silence the

insults with which he is treated, and by sacrificing, through a dishonorable

weakness, through the fear of man, his name and his glory? No, my

brethren, we are not the friends whom Jesus Christ has chosen — this title

disgraces us, if his insulted name does not rouse in us all our love and all

our zeal for his adorable person.

upon all our hearts! What a flame would soon be kindled in the world!

What could not a thousand traveling preachers in Europe and America do

for their Master, if all were thoroughly filled with this spirit of holy zeal!

But should we confine our observation to these alone? Certainly, our local

preachers, exhorters, and even our leaders, are in their respective degrees

called to reprove, rebuke, and exhort. The whole together probably make

not less than fifteen thousand lights to illuminate the world. O that they

were all faithful. “O God, inspire them all with the love of thy glory!” Yes,

fathers and brethren, I know and rejoice in the mighty good which has been

16

wrought upon the earth by your instrumentality: but you may still do

abundantly more: yea, we might all of us have already been much more

useful than we have been. “Lord, humble us before thee for our past

unfaithfulness.”

who respects his office, and loves the people intrusted to his charge, will

find but little time to sacrifice to the useless conversations and dissipated

spirit of the world. He seldom appears among the people of the world; for,

having no taste for their pleasures or amusements, or even for their

company, the unavoidable calls of duty or propriety which require him to be

among them are but rare. We cannot often be in their company, without not

only injuring the divine life within us, but more or less debasing ourselves

and our sacred office in their eyes. All corrupt as the world which lieth in

the wicked one is, it exacts from us virtue without spot, without clouds,

and even without any of those infirmities which are inseparable from

humanity.

to us: it believes that it may indulge itself in every thing, and yet in us will

pass over nothing. It has perpetually upon us the eyes of malevolent

censors. A word out of order, a simple inattention, the least motion which

may be construed into impropriety, a compliment paid without due

reflection, become in us faults which will not soon be forgotten. The men

of the world, if possible, will give a shade to all our words and actions;

draw from them the most invidious consequences; and even in those

moments when we relax ourselves in their favor from the gravity of our

character they will attribute the whole to a taste of their spirit, and to a secret

approbation of their views which we dare not avow, rather than to

condescension and complaisance toward them. They will at last be bold

enough to tempt us to imitate them in the liberties they take; will treat our

precautions and reserve as the fruits of a minute and contracted spirit; and

for the little we abate in the dignity of our character for the sake of pleasing

them, they will in our absence pay our complaisance with the most insolent

derisions and dishonorable reflections.

gaining the esteem and good opinion of the world, by familiarizing

ourselves and mixing often with it. The more the world sees us, except in

our public duties, the more will it either hate or despise us. It hates us from

the instant it feels that we will not put up with its manners. Let us very

rarely have any thing to do with it, and we shall appear in its eyes with

greater dignity, and be treated with greater respect. Let us attend to every

due and proper call which the world may justly require of us, as well as to

all the demands of charity and good works; but let us always conduct

ourselves as the ambassadors of Jesus Christ, as in some sense filling his

place. It is then only that our ministerial character, under the grace and

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providence of God, will be to us a safeguard against every temptation. But

if we seek the world for the sake of the world, we must conform to its taste

and its manners. We should be badly received upon the present ground,

were we to carry there that holy gravity which should never forsake us. We

should derange its pleasures, disconcert its assemblies, and its liberty of

speech. We should be an intolerable burden to it. Our presence alone would

be horrible; and it would say of us, as the enemies of holiness say of the

righteous man in the Wisdom of Solomon, “He is grievous to us to

behold!” There is no alternative. We must die to the world; or partake of its

spirit. We cannot serve God and mammon.

to any other in this as in a thousand respects. We are seldom tempted to be

in the world. We must love it exceedingly if we find many occasions to be

in it. Our time is spent between the mount, the multitude, and our own

people. We almost continually reside in families which look for, and which

love and honor, the seriousness and gravity of their preacher. It is their

delight to converse with us on the things of God: if it were not so, they

would be disgraceful members of our society. Yes, it is food to the souls of

our people to have what they have heard in the pulpit pressed upon them in

conversation at the fireside: and we should be the most inexcusable of men,

if we did not improve these precious opportunities among the families we

visit. The Methodist preachers,” said the late Revelation Charles Wesley to

me once “do not fully consider all the blessings of their situation; one of the

greatest of which,” added he, “is that wall of contempt with which you are

surrounded, and which preserves you from a thousand temptations to

which the clergy in general are exposed, by keeping the world at a distance

from you.” But though our calls to mix with the men of the world are but

rare, let us never on such occasions betray our Master, but conduct

ourselves as faithful servants, ambassadors, and friends of Jesus Christ.

“But thou, O man of God, flee these things, and follow after

righteousness, godliness, love, patience, meekness,”

If you were of the world, its interests, its prejudices, its vanities, would be

your portion: you would be obliged to conform to its maxims and language,

to justify it, and to rise up against all those who dare condemn it: but you

are men of God; you are in the world, but you are not of the world: you are

charged in the midst of it with the interests of God, with the care of his

glory, and with the honor of his spiritual worship. The ambassador of a

king speaks only in the name of him employer: he knows no other man

while he acts from the authority, and is concerned with the interests, of the

kingdom he represents: he lays aside the private character, and appears

always in his public capacity. And shall we, brethren, who are ambassadors

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for the King of kings, men of God in the midst of a world which is at war

with him — shall we lay aside our holy and public character with which he

has invested its, and become men of the world, his enemies, friends? Shall

we blush to speak the language of Him who employs us? Shall we suffer

him to be insulted in our presence without supporting his interests and his

glory — without using the authority with which he has clothed us to set

ourselves with a holy zeal against the despisers of his name, his laws, and

his truth? Shall we, my brethren, forgetting the majesty of Him we

represent, and the honor he has conferred upon us by intrusting his

embassy and authority to us — shall we authorize by our conduct the

maxims of the world, his enemy? Shall we appear to hold intelligence with

it, that its errors and prejudices may prevail over his divine doctrines, and

sacred morals, of which he has made us the public dispensers and

defenders? No, my brethren; let us bear our holy title of men of God, as it

were, upon our foreheads, and through all the minutest particular of our

conduct: let us throughout be men of God: let all our most common actions,

conversation, fellowship, and commerce with mankind, be ennobled and

sanctified by this holy and honorable character: let us never abase ourselves

by laying it aside for a moment; and let us remember that the world will

always respect it in us as long. as we respect it in ourselves.

all those obstacles which the world, the flesh, and the devil incessantly

oppose to that zeal which renders them instruments of thy mercies to

mankind: inflame them with that spirit of fire and wisdom which thou didst

shed abroad in the hearts of thy first disciples: let the succession of this

apostolic zeal be transmitted with increasing abundance in thy church, with

the succession of that ministry which thou hast promised to be with always,

into thy vineyard, men “mighty in deed and word,” whom the world may

not intimidate, whom all the powers of the earth may not be able to shake,

whom worldly interests may never influence, whom thy glory and the

salvation of souls may regulate and animate in all their undertakings; and

who will esteem the opinions of men as nothing, but as far as they

contribute to make thee adored and glorified in all ages!

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DISCOURSE 2

“Watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an

PART 1

In my discourse on the former part of the apostle’s charge to Timothy, I

considered the zeal which the ministers of the gospel should constantly

manifest for the salvation of souls; particularly in all the public duties of

their office, and by the improvement of every opportunity afforded them to

bear a testimony for God to the people of the world. We now proceed to

speak upon the remaining particulars of this solemn charge.

strongly impressed on every private Christian; for, without the constant

exercise of it, the life of God cannot possibly be preserved in the soul. But

to enlarge on the duty as it respects the private character would carry me

beyond the limits of a discourse; and therefore I shall chiefly consider it as it

belongs to the office of a minister of the gospel.

The spirit of our ministry is a spirit of separation from the world; of prayer

and secret intercession for the souls of men, and, especially for the church

of Christ; of labor; of firmness and fidelity; of knowledge; and of piety. Our

watchfulness, therefore, as ministers, should be particularly directed against

those things which oppose the above essential properties of the spirit of our

calling.

for the ministry, (and if we have not received it we are no ministers,)

withdraws us also from all the other public functions of society; not that we

cease from being citizens of our country, or from the obedience and

submission due to the king, and all that are in authority — to the powers

but the ministry of the word is become our great employment; the public

temples of God, “where his honor dwelleth,” are our places of public

resort; the visitation of the sick and the poor, and all the other works of

piety and charity, our subordinate tasks; and prayer and praise our

recreation and pleasure.

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from common use. His tongue should only discourse of God: useless

conversations at least, however harmless in themselves, defile his tongue;

as, under the law, a holy vessel would have been defiled by common

meats. His eyes have entered into covenant not to behold vanity; or if they

do, they lose, without genuine repentance, the right of entering into the

interior of the tabernacle, to behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus

Christ. In short, the whole person of a minister of Christ should be a living

example of true religion, which ought always to be surrounded with

decency, gravity, and respect.

things: for the cares, the solicitudes, the employments of the world, when

you enter into them, will rob you of your unction, however your natural or

improved talents may remain; and will not only profane, but in time entirely

destroy all the genuine virtue of your vocation, and bring you thoroughly

under the yoke of the world. The vessels and ornaments which were used

in the temple under the law were never appropriated to common use; it

would have been a crime which would have defiled their consecration: now

a minister of the gospel, consecrated to God by his own blessed Spirit, in a

manner infinitely more holy than that of the sacred vessels and ornaments

under the law, defiles and profanes abundantly more his consecration, if he

makes his person, his talents, his spirit, his heart, to serve to dead works

and the common employments of the world. O thou holy doctrine of the

cross, how little art thou known by those ministers who enter into the

affairs, agitations, and commotions of this miserable world! The apostle has

warned them in vain, that

“no man who warreth, entangleth himself with the affairs of this

life; that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier,”

Alas! these become principal actors on the stage of the world. The

dispensers of the truths and blessings of Heaven become the ministers of

carnal views and projects: those whom God has charged with the eternal

interests of the people, neglect them, and make it their glory to spend their

strength in carrying on worldly affairs.

Although it is the privilege of a faithful minister to have a river of peace

continually flowing in his soul, yet, paradoxical as it may appear, his life, at

the same time, is a life of prayer, lamentation, and complaint. The Prophet

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Isaiah, on a prophetic view of the great millennium, “when all flesh should

come to worship before the Lord,” cried out,

“Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her;

rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her,”

When we see so large a part of the inhabitants of the globe lying in the

wicked one, covered with heathen or Mohammedan darkness; — or, what

is still worse, when we see infidelity reigning in the midst of the blaze of

gospel day, it is impossible, if we breathe the true spirit of the gospel

ministry, but we shall be daily, yea, habitually praying between the porch

Jerusalem, when he saw her hardened in her blindness. Yes, my brethren,

as long as Satan reigns upon earth, the true ministers of God will more or

less mourn and lament. As long as the children of Israel, on the plain,

employ themselves in dances and revels, forget the God of their fathers,

and madly prostitute their homage to the golden calf, the true Moseses on

the mountains will tear their garments — will break their hearts before the

Lord. “The world will rejoice,” says Christ to his apostles: its children will

run on dancing and sending forth cries of joy, till they precipitate

themselves into the abyss. Let their laughter and their sports be their

portion: let that holy sorrow which is consistent with constant joy in the

Holy Ghost be ours. The world, in the midst of which we live, will be

continually to us a spectacle of grief and concern; and even when they

persecute us not, though crosses and gibbets do not attend us, their entire

depravation will itself alone be an unexhausted source of lamentation before

God.

a field, a harvest, a building which should be daily rising and growing to

perfection, and a holy warfare — all terms which announce cares and

fatigues; all symbols of labor and application.

and moments which he employs in the commerce of the world, in

dissipation, or in the vanities of worldly society, except where occasional

duties call him, are days and moments which were due to the salvation of

his fellow-creatures, and of which those souls which suffer through his

neglect will demand a strict account at the tribunal of Jesus Christ. By the

divine unction he has received, and by his devotion of himself to the

ministry — the church of Christ has acquired, a peculiar property in his

person, his leisure, his occupations, and his talents. These are all now

22

consecrated things, which form part of the property of the church of God.

He is only the depositary of them, and has no right to dispose of them at his

pleasure: he is responsible for them to God and his church. It is not for

himself that he has been numbered among the ministers of Christ, but for

the church, that he may bear his part in her toils and ministry. He degrades

the title she has given him when he abandons the labors she has appointed

for him: he ceases to be a minister, from the moment he ceases to be a

laborer: he spends in worldly commerce and frivolous occupations that time

on which rolls the salvation of the souls among whom he should have toiled

— that time on which depends the eternal destiny of his brethren — that

time to which God has attached the salvation of sinners, the strengthening

of the weak, and the perfecting of the strong. “May the Spirit of the Holy

One increase our zeal!”

season, with all longsuffering and doctrine.” The public vices should

always find us inflexible, inexorable. The countenance of a minister of

Christ should never blush at the reproaches which never fail to accompany

the liberty and faithful execution of his office. He bears written on his

forehead, with much more true majesty than the high priest of the law,

Spirit of God has bestowed upon him for the ministry of the gospel is a

grace of strength and courage it inspires the soul marked by this divine zeal

with an heroic disposition, which raises it above its own natural weakness;

which puts into it noble, great, and generous sentiments, worthy of the

dignity of its ministry; and gives it an elevation of mind which raises it

above the fears, the hopes, — the reputation, — the reproaches, and every

thing else, which rule over and regulate the conduct of the generality of

men: yea, which bestows upon us that ministerial vigor and apostolic fire

which so gloriously manifested themselves in the founders and first heroes

of our divine religion.

most opposed to the spirit of the world. For the spirit of the world is

continually shown in a commerce of attentions, complaisance, art, and

management: it seems to have hardly an opinion of its own: it can overlook,

if not applaud, an improper sentiment covered with art and delicacy: it can

bend, yea, accustom its ears to the witty, but cruel touches of smooth

malevolence; and can suffer, without reproof, rebuke, or exhortation, the

preference which is daily given to the gifts of nature over those of grace. In

short, the minister (so called) who will live in the bustle of the world, must

think, or at least speak, as the world does: he must not discover the firm

23

and serious spirit of a minister of God: if he did, he would soon become its

butt and its laugh; and all his worldly plans would be entirely defeated. No:

we, who should be the salt of the earth, would in such case be obliged to

lend ourselves, to accommodate ourselves, and to putrefy with the children

of this earth. We who are called to be the censors of the world, would soon

become in some sense its panegyrist: we, who should be the lights of the

world, would by our open suffrage, or by our base, dastardly silence,

perpetuate its blindness: in short, we, who should be instrumentally the

resource and salvation of the world, would miserably perish with it.

ministerial spirit as the busy commerce of the world. We enter by little, and

imperceptibly, into its prejudices, its excuses, and all its vain reasonings.

The more we meddle with it, the less we find it culpable. We can at last

even plead for its softness, its idleness, its luxury, and its ambition. We

begin, like the world, to give soft names to all these passions and

indulgences; and that which confirms us in this new system of conduct is,

that we have the universal plaudit of worldly men; for they will give to our

baseness and cowardice the specious names of moderation, elevation of

spirit, and a talent for making virtue amiable; while they give to the contrary

conduct the odious names of littleness, rusticity, excess, and hardness of

heart, only fit to withdraw men from goodness, and render piety hateful or

contemptible. Thus we treat obligingly a world which gives to our baseness

and unfaithfulness all the honors due to prudence; and we believe it not to

be so guilty as is commonly imagined among believers, from the time we

love its esteem. For, alas! my brethren, there are too few of the Sauls and

Barnabases who would not relax from the truth, though they thereby caused

themselves to be stoned even by those people who, a few moments before,

would have offered incense to them as gods just descended from heaven!

incompatible with the busy commerce of the world: you will no more find

any thing there to reprove, in proportion as you familiarize yourselves with

those things which are reprehensible in it: you will lose the views of those

great rules of conduct which have governed the faithful ministers of God in

all the ages of the church: you will no longer cultivate those seeds of divine

science which, through grace, have helped to make you useful in the Lord’s

vineyard: the Scriptures, and the writings of the best divines, will became

strange and tiresome: you will soon have lost your taste for them; and you

will prefer to those serious studies, so conformable to your ministerial

duties, books which, to you, should be comparatively vain and frivolous;

but which render you more serviceable and agreeable to the world to which

you have delivered up yourself. These observations lead me to a fifth

reflection on this head; namely, that,

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doctrines of divine truth: we are required, like the prophet, to devour the

book which contains the law and the gospel, notwithstanding all the

bitterness which may accompany our studies and watchings: we must

nourish our souls with the bread of the word of God, as it were by the

sweat of our brow; and adorn our souls internally with the divine law, as

the Jewish priests adorned themselves eternally with their sacred garments.

The divine writings are the basis and substance of our gospel ministry,

which we may compare to the two great lights which God has set in the

firmament: like them, we should rule over the day and the night; over the

day, in guiding the faith and piety of believers; and over the night, in

clearing our minds from all darkness of error, and filling them with spiritual

light. We are the chief interpreters of the divine law and gospel, the guides

of the people, the seers and prophets appointed by Christ to clear their

doubts, and from the divine word to discover to them the whole will of

God.

Alas! nothing is so fatal as that to a taste for study and retirement. I am not

now speaking of profound studies, of sounding all the depths of antiquity

for the elucidation of the doctrines and discipline of Christianity, or of

furnishing the church of God with new and useful publications: these are

not the things which the spirit of your vocation exacts from you: these are

studies and talents manifested in an eminent degree by only a small number

of the wisest ministers whom God has raised up to be general lights of their

age. But I say that for those common, ordinary studies, which are

indispensably necessary to qualify a minister to “divide the word of truth

aright, and to give to each their portion of meat in due season;” in short, to

be in a situation to exercise his functions with light and success: I say that

for these studies he must have a spirit accustomed to think, to meditate, and

to be with and in himself; he must fly from that commerce with the world

which soon annexes to his books a weariness which is insupportable; he

must have a desire of increasing in divine knowledge; a character of mind

which is an enemy to frivolous employments; a habit of retirement and

reflection; an arrangement of life, whereby he can give an account to

himself of his progress, and whereby the moments set apart for the different

duties of his situation will always find them selves in their own place, and

conformable to their destination; in a word, a kind of uniform, occupied,

regulated life, which can in nowise have the least alliance with the perpetual

variations and derangements of a worldly life and conversation.

25

but that candor of conscience, that tenderness of religion, that taste of God,

that delicacy of soul, which the appearance alone of evil alarms. Behold that

spirit of piety, which is the soul and safeguard of our ministry!

a life of prayer, of retirement, of circumspection, of faith, and of rigorous

attention to the senses, ought we not to lead, that we may be always

prepared for our holy duties! All the dispositions, desires, and affections of

our hearts, should be purified, sanctified, consecrated by the unction of the

Holy Spirit, residing within us. How can we appear before the

congregation of the Lord, in their name to raise ourselves up to the footstool

of the eternal throne, there to humble ourselves with the dominions and

powers of heaven into a sort of self-annihilation, there to sing praises with

them to the majesty of God, when just before we were drawn a hundred

different ways through the dirt of the world? How can we in such case

ascend the pulpit, and manifest to the people all the seriousness and grief of

true zeal? With what grace can we speak of a death to the world, of

avoiding the dangers to which it exposes us, and the snares which Satan

there lays in our way, of the necessity of prayer, retirement, and

watchfulness, of the eye which should be plucked out, of the hand and foot

crucifying maxims so unknown to the world, and so contrary to its

manners? To be good preachers of Jesus Christ, and of him crucified, we

must ourselves be fastened to the cross of Jesus Christ: to inspire a taste of

God, and the things of heaven, we must feel them ourselves: to touch the

hearts of the people, our own hearts must be touched with the living coal.

keeps us at a considerable distance from the world in general. But among

the families which we visit, are there not, in most of them, some who do

not make even a profession of religion? How cautious should we then be

that we do not enter into their spirit, thereby hardening them against the

truth, and injuring the minds of those who are truly religious! And of our

own people, alas! all are not Israel who are of Israel. To such, instead of

indulging them in their vain conversation, how closely, how faithfully

should we speak, as being peculiarly responsible for their souls! If in a

family there be any mourners in Zion, how dangerous, how dreadful would

it be for such to hear any thing trifling from the lips of him to whom they

are looking for a word of comfort! No time can be lost in laboring to bring

26

such to Christ. All reading and study should be laid aside, while the

opportunity is afforded us of leading to the Savior’s blood an immortal soul

under the convincing operations of the Holy Spirit. Such occasions should

be peculiarly prized — occasions of fixing jewels of the highest value in our

crown of glory, for

“they that turn many to righteousness shall shine

Again, when we meet with souls which enjoy the love of God, how careful

should we be to feed them with spiritual food, — how careful to say

nothing which might injure the tender spiritual life within them, or grieve

that holy Comforter who has thus far brought them on their way to heaven!

But, especially, when we meet with those who have drunk deep of the

waters of life, and live in close fellowship with God, then we should

improve the precious moments for the welfare of our own souls; and from

their spiritual observations learn more to enlarge in our public addresses on

the most important of all subjects, Christian experience. Here is a field of

action! Here are opportunities for doing good! What mighty privileges do

we enjoy as traveling preachers! “May the Lord enable us to improve them

to the uttermost, for his glory and the salvation of millions!”

addressed only to ministers of the gospel. The private members of the

church of Christ have a different calling; and if they improve the means

which the Lord affords them, he will preserve them in the midst of all their

business; and use many of them in their respective stations in his church for

the advancement of his kingdom upon earth. One grand truth which I have

been laboring to establish is this, — that when any receive a full call to the

ministry, it is their duty to sacrifice every secular employment to it; and if

not, that divine unction which they received for their office — that peculiar

apostolic spirit which, according to their measure, was bestowed upon

them, and which none can comprehend but those who possess it, will soon

be extinguished; and they themselves will incur the guilt of unfaithfulness to

the vocation of God, in the high office to which he has called them, or in

which he has been pleased to station them.

PART 2

I now proceed to consider the next grand particular in the apostle’s charge

to Timothy: “Endure afflictions.”

faithful ministers of Christ in former ages. A spirit of civil and religious

liberty has accompanied even the spirit of infidelity; whereby the enemies of

revelation have, in a considerable degree, disarmed and incapacitated

27

themselves from injuring the church of God: and the earth has been made in

succeeded to the ministry of that noble army of martyrs, who suffered “for

10:16. No thanks are due to our opponents, if we be not persecuted like our

predecessors. If we had reason, like the martyrs of old, to fear the barbarity

of the enemies of our religion — if the most cruel torments were the only

recompense we could promise ourselves in this life for all our zeal and

labors, we also should be brought to the alternative of renouncing Jesus

Christ, and the sacred ministry with which he has honored us, or to face

these dangers with holy joy. But, on the contrary, what in comparison have

we to suffer? Only the insults occasionally of the vilest of the people, which

will not touch even the skirts of our clothes, if we suffer them not to affect

our hearts; and those crosses which are indispensably necessary to keep us

at the feet of Jesus Christ, and to render us fit instruments for His service

who will not give his glory to another.

take up his cross. Without this, he refuses to acknowledge us as his

disciples, or to make us partakers of that glory into which he entered not

himself but by the way of the cross.

“Whosoever doth not bear his cross, says Christ,

“If [we be] children,” says St. Paul, “then heirs; heirs of God, and

joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may

it is because we are weak; because the least disappointment in our favorite

pursuit makes us revolt against the will of Providence; because

contradiction raises our anger, or commendation and success our vanity and

pride, that the Lord sees it necessary we should pass through tribulation and

trials.

love ourselves excessively: it is to live more by nature than by faith: it is to

suffer ourselves to be conducted by the vivacity of our own natural

inclinations, and not by the wisdom from above. Now, with this excessive

fund of self-love, if the Lord were not to manage our weakness, and to

humble us by affliction; if he did not strike our bodies with some habitual

languor, to render the world insipid to us; if he did not prepare for us some

losses in our substance; if he did not defeat some of our most favorite

projects; if he did not place us in such situations, that the most trying and

yet unavoidable duties should fill up our happiest hours; if he were not to

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raise up a against us opposition by false brethren or by true brethren in a

word, if he were not to fix between us and our weakness some kind of

barrier, which might be strong enough to arrest and retain us, we should

soon be deceived by our false peace and prosperity; we should soon be

without a bridle for ourselves or our desires. The same weakness and selflove

which make us so sensible of trials and afflictions would make us still

more sensible of; and less prepared for, the dangers of pleasure and

prosperity.

endeavor to excuse ourselves, by saying we are weak. The weakness of our

hearts arises only from the weakness of our faith; the soul of a Christian

should be a strong soul, proof against persecutions, reproaches, infirmities,

and death itself. The Christian may be oppressed, but he cannot be

subdued; you may snatch from him his goods, his reputation, his whole

fortune, yea, his life itself; but you cannot rob him of the treasure of faith

and grace which lies at the bottom of his heart; and abundantly compensates

for all his frivolous and temporary losses: you may, perhaps, make him

shed tears of sensibility and sorrow, for religion does not extinguish the

feelings of nature; but his heart in an instant resists, disavows, as it were,

his weakness, and turns even his tears into tears of piety. What shall I say?

A Christian rejoices even in tribulations; he regards them as marks of the

benevolence and watchful providence of him God, as precious sureties of

future promises, and as the happy characters of his resemblance of Jesus

Christ.

have not sufficient to support the crosses which the Lord is pleased to lay

upon us, we have not sufficient for those other duties which the gospel

prescribes. It requires strength of grace to pardon an injury; to speak all the

good we can of those who calumniate us; or to hide the defects of those

who would destroy our reputation or usefulness. It requires strength of

grace to fly from a world which allures us; to snatch ourselves from

pleasures, or to oppose inclinations, which would draw us into evil; to

resist customs to which the usage of the world has given the authority of

laws or to use prosperity in a Christian spirit. It requires strength of grace to

conquer ourselves; to repress the rising desire; to stifle the pleasing

sentiments; continually to recall to the strict rules of the gospel a heart which

is so given to wander. In short, were we to review all the precepts of the

gospel, there would not be one which does not suppose a strong and

generous soul, fortified by grace. Throughout it is necessary that we do

violence to ourselves. The kingdom of God is a field, which must be

cleared and rooted up; a vineyard, in which we must bear the heat and

burden of the day; a career, in which we must perpetually and valiantly fight

the battles of the Lord. In a word, the whole life of a true disciple of Jesus

Christ bears the character of the cross; and if we lose for an instant this

strength of grace, we fall. To say then that you cannot endure afflictions

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because you are weak, is to say that you are destitute of the spirit of the

gospel.

should have a confidence in the goodness of our God, that he will never

prove, afflict, or try us beyond our strength; that he always proportions the

afflictions to our weakness; that he gives his chastisements, as he does his

judgments, in weight and measure; that in afflicting he wills not to destroy

us, but to purify and save us, and qualify us for greater usefulness in his

church; that he who aids us, himself bears the crosses which he himself

imposes upon us; that he chastises us as a father, and not as a judge; that the

same hand which strikes us, supports us; that the same rod which gives the

wound, brings the oil and the honey to soften it. He knows the character of

our hearts, and how far our weakness goes; and, as in afflicting us his will

far to weigh his hand, and lay the burden upon us.

ministers and disciples? Is he a cruel God, who takes pleasure in the

sufferings of his servants? Is he a barbarous tyrant, who finds his grandeur

and safety only in the tears and blood of the subjects who adore him? It is

then for our benefit alone that he punishes and chastises us; his tenderness

suffers, if I may so speak, from our woes; and yet his love is so just and

wise, that he still leaves us to suffer, because he foresees that by

terminating our afflictions he would in the end increase our misery, and

prevent our usefulness and glory. He is like a skillful surgeon, who has

pity indeed on the cries and sufferings of his patient, and yet cuts to the

quick all that he finds corrupted in the wound; he is never more kind or

beneficent to his servants than when he appears to be most severe; and it is

indubitably evident that afflictions are necessary and useful to us, since a

God so good and so kind can resolve to lay them upon us. We read in the

histories of the martyrs, how weak girls could set at defiance all the

barbarity of tyrants! how children, before they were able to support the

labors of life, could run with joy to meet the rigors of the most dreadful

deaths! how old men, sinking already under the weight of their bodies,

seemed, by their cries of triumph, to feel their youth renewed like that of an

eagle, in the midst of the torments of slow martyrdoms! And are you weak,

my brethren? Then that weakness itself if you be faithful to the grace of

God, will bring glory to the faith and religion of Jesus Christ. It is on that

account that the Lord has chosen you, to make known in you and by you

how much stronger grace is than nature. He

“hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;

and hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things

which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which

are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to

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bring to naught the things that are, that no flesh should glory in his

If you were born with any spiritual strength, you would do no honor to the

power of grace; that patience which is now the pure gift of God, would then

be justly attributed to man. Thus, in a sense, the weaker we are, the fitter

instruments we become for the designs and glory of God. He delights to

choose the feeble for his greatest purposes, that man may attribute nothing

to himself; and that the vain constancy of the wise and the philosophers may

be confounded by their example. His first disciples were but feeble lambs

when he sent them into the world, and exposed them in the midst of

wolves. These are the earthen vessels which the Lord is pleased to break,

like those of Gideon, that in them the light and power of faith might shine

with greater splendor and magnificence. And if you enter into the designs of

his mercy and wisdom, your weakness, which in your eyes justifies your

murmurs or unfaithfulness, would prove one of the sweetest consolations

of your trials.

reason or philosophy, which seeks all the consolations of its pains in the

glory of suffering with constancy. I ask not that insensibility of heart which

either feels not its miseries, or despises them. Give me, Lord, that sweet

simplicity, that tender sensible heart, which appears so little fit to support its

tribulations and trials: only increase thy comforts and thy graces. Then, the

weaker I appear in the eyes of men, the greater wilt thou appear in my

weakness; and the more will the children of this world admire the power of

faith, which alone can raise the feeblest and most timid souls to that point of

constancy and firmness which philosophy has never been able to attain.”

“Endure,” therefore, “afflictions.”

to justify their murmurs or unfaithfulness, by the character or peculiarity of

the afflictions themselves. We easily persuade ourselves that we could bear

crosses of another nature with resignation; but those which the Lord has

laid upon us are of such a character as can yield no consolation; that the

more we examine what passes among men, the more singular we find our

trials or afflictions to be, and our situation almost without example.

genuine faith, I would answer, That the more extraordinary our trials or

afflictions are, the more clearly may we discover the hand of Providence in

them; the more evidently may we observe the secret designs of a God ever

attentive to our interests; the more may we presume, that under such new

events he conceals new views and singular designs of mercy, for the

welfare of our souls, and for our future usefulness in his church.

“God sees me.” He counts my sighs; he weighs my afflictions; “he puts my

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tears in his bottle;” he blesses the whole to my present sanctification and

usefulness in his church, and to my eternal happiness. Since I have felt his

heavy hand upon me, in so singular a manner that there seemed to be no

resource remaining here below, I feel myself more than ever under his

immediate inspection. O! if I had enjoyed a more tranquil situation, his eyes

would not have been upon me as they are at present; perhaps I should have

been forgotten, and confounded among those who have their portion in this

world. Lovely sufferings! which, in depriving me of all human succor,

restore to me my God, and make him my refuge and resource through his

blessing. Precious afflictions! which, in making me forget the creatures,

have rendered me, through the co-operation of rich and suffering grace, a

continual object of the remembrance and mercies of my Lord!

endure afflictions? Alas! take care that the Lord does not hear thee in his

wrath: take care that he does not punish thee in granting thee thy desire; that

he does not find thee unworthy of his temporal afflictions; for

“whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,

brethren, that if our pains and trials appear excessive, it is only through the

excess of corruption in our affections, which gives strength to our

sufferings: our losses or afflictions become so grievous to us, only through

those attachments which bind us to external objects; and the excess of our

sorrows or chagrin is always the excess of an unjust love of the creatures.

Alas, brethren, the woes and afflictions of others are too often nothing in

our eyes. We do not observe that the trials of thousands around us are

greater than our own; that our afflictions have innumerable resources,

which theirs have not; that in our habitual infirmities, or in our trials in the

church, we find in the number of persons who are still attentive to our

wants, an abundance of comforts denied to others — when we have lost a

warm and faithful friend, we have many ways to soften our bitterness:

when persecuted by our relations or families, we can find in the tenderness

an confidence of our friends and brethren, attentions and kindness which

we found not at home. In short, we have an abundance of human sources

of satisfaction, to compensate for our trials; and if we put into the scale, on

one side our comfort, and on the other our afflictions, we shall find that our

hardness of heart toward our fellow creatures, which magnifies in our eyes

our own afflictions. Let us daily enter under the unfurnished and miserable

roofs of the poor, where shame frequently conceals miseries the most

frightful and affecting: let us go to those asylums of wretchedness, where

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calamities seem to be heaped together: it is there we shall learn what we

ought to think of our own afflictions: it is there that touched with the excess

of so many and great miseries, we shall blush to have given names to the

lightness of our own: it is there that our murmurs an unfaithful attentions

will change into expressions, and into the very spirit of gratitude and

thankfulness: and, less occupied with the thoughts of those light crosses

which we bear, than with the many from which we have been delivered, we

shall almost begin to fear the indulgence of our God, so far from

complaining of his severity. Endure,” therefore, “afflictions.”

important reflection: That God, in all the trials and afflictions which he lays

upon, or suffers to happen to, his zealous ministering servants, has but two

ends in his view and in his gracious intention; first, their sanctification and

eternal happiness; secondly, their usefulness in his church. Every thing he

permits or does for them here below, he does it, or permits it, only to

facilitate these gracious designs: every agreeable or afflictive event which

any way concerns them, he has prepared for them, to make them more

holy, useful, and eternally glorious. All his plans concerning them have

reference to these purposes alone: all that they are in the order of nature,

their birth, their talents, the age in which they live, their friends, and their

vocation — all these, in his views of mercy toward them, and mercy toward

the world, have entered into his divine impenetrable designs for the eternal

salvation of themselves and others; and not all the powers of earth and hell,

visible world itself was only made for the world which is to come: all that

passes here has its secret connection with eternity: all that which we see is

only the figure of things invisible. This world would not be worthy of the

care of an infinitely wise and merciful God, but as far as, by secret and

wonderful connections, its various revolutions tend to form that church in

the heavens, that immortal assembly of the redeemed, where he will be

eternally glorified: he acts not in time but for eternity; and he is in this the

great model which we should in ever thing follow.

all the creatures, shall no more adore but thee in and through them all; shall

no more attribute to them events, of which thou alone, in thy immediate or

permissive providence, art the author; shall acknowledge in all the various

situations in which thou hast placed us the adorable conduct and wisdom of

thy providence; and in the midst of crosses themselves shall taste that

unutterable peace which the world and all its pleasure can never bestow!”

trials and afflictions. Philosophy may stop our complaints, but can never

truly soften our grief. The world may stupefy our anxiety, but can never

heal it; and in the midst of all its employments or amusements, the secret

sting of sorrow will remain always deeply plunged in the bottom of the

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heart. God alone can prove the effectual comforter of all our pains; and is

there need of any other for the faithful soul? Weak mortals, by their vain

discourse and ordinary language of tenderness and compassion, may speak

to the ears of the body; but it is the God of all consolation who alone knows

how to speak to the heart.

which I have experienced; and it was probably owing to my want of grace,

that they to me appeared to be great. But I can bless God that ever I was

tried and afflicted; and hardly know for which to thank him most, his

disguised or undisguised mercies. O how he has broken my stubborn will,

and humbled my proud heart, and moderated my ambitious views, (though

all seemed to be for his glory,) by trials and afflictions! And I doubt not but

many of my brethren, as well as myself, (though not in the same degree

with me, because they did not equally need it,) can bear testimony to the

grace and power of God in the use of this profitable. means. Let us, then,

my brethren,

“endure afflictions:” let us “take unto us the whole armour of God,

that we may be able to withstand in the evil day;

weakness itself without thee. It is thy grace alone which can sanctify the

means, and make our afflictions profitable. Lord, teach us to depend wholly

upon thee: it is with thee alone we desire to forget all our trials, all our

pains, all the creatures. But, alas! too often have we wished that the foolish

projects of our own hearts should serve as the rule of thine infinite wisdom!

We have wandered, and been lost in our thoughts: our imaginations have

formed a thousand flattering dreams; our hearts have run after phantoms.

We have desired more favor from men, more health of body, more talents,

more glory, as if we had been wiser and better acquainted with our true

interests than thou, O omniscient Lord God! We have not entered, as we

might, into the gracious designs of thy love in our favor. But O! from this

time thou shalt be our only comforter; and we will seek, in the meditation of

thy holy law, those solid and lasting consolations which the creatures can

never afford. Lord, take us into thyself; be thou the joy of our hearts, be

thou the delight of our eyes, be thou our portion for ever! Even so, Lord

Jesus. Amen.”

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DISCOURSE 3

PART 1

considered the necessity of true zeal in all the public duties of the ministry,

and in our intercourse with the people of the world, and the necessity of

watchfulness and enduring afflictions. We come now to enlarge on the two

remaining particulars of the charge, “Do the work of an evangelist, “make

full proof of thy ministry.”

only for his own sake, but for the benefit of the church in all ages, will

appear the more necessary and indispensable, if we recollect that the

corruption of the ministry has been alway the grand source of the corruption

of a people, of the general depravation of their manners, and of the

extinction of all the faith.

well know, that in proportion as the ministers of a church are holy, holiness

will reign among the people. The purity of Christianity, wherever it has

flourished, never has begun to decay but with the fall of the ministry; and

disorder has generally begun at the house of God. Thus it is in a

considerable measure we who decide, if I may so speak, on the salvation or

damnation of the people: upon us, in some sense, depend the increase or

diminution of the reign of Jesus Christ upon earth, the consummation or

destruction of his work, the utility or inutility of his blood and mission, the

glory or reproach of his religion, and all the designs of God concerning the

salvation of man.

either holy pillars to support the feeble, or stones of offense against which

the strong themselves may break in pieces: we become either brazen

serpents raised on high, to heal through grace the plagues of the multitude,

or golden calves placed in the camp of the Lord, to be an occasion to them

of apostasy, wickedness, and idolatry. We are so situated, that we can

neither stand nor fall alone: the destiny of those souls over whom we are set

is in a considerable degree awfully attached to ours!

continually say to himself, “I am employed in the church to destroy and not

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to build up: I am become the tempter and murderer of those souls of whom

I ought to have been instrumentally the savior and the father. I am charged

with a dispensation of the gospel, and yet only make every thing which

should facilitate the salvation of souls turn out to their ruin; and I, in effect,

employ against religion all that which religion has intrusted me with for its

maintenance and support.” Behold here, without exceeding the truth, the

character of a bad minister. Certainly, my brethren, a bad minister is the

greatest plague which the wrath of God can suffer to spring up among any

people.

more full of consolation is the character of a true minister of the Lord Jesus

Christ. He continues on earth the mission and ministry of his adorable

Master. He co-operates with him in the consummation of the happiness of

the saints, in the edification of his mystic body, and in the accomplishment

of all his designs of mercy toward man. He is instrumentally here below, as

Christ himself, a savior of his people, a reconciler of heaven and earth: and

when he shall one day appear before the throne of the great Judge of quick

and dead, with all his own, he will be able to say to him with confidence,

“Behold me, and the children thou hast given me. Those that thou gavest

me I have kept, and none of them is lost. I render them back to thee,

because thou didst deliver them to me, that they might be sanctified through

thy truth, and might sing with all thy redeemed the eternal praises of thy

grace.”

great and as heavenly as our vocation. Let us, then, together animate each

other, both by the eminence and importance of our ministry, and by the

glorious and comfortable fruits which are the consequences of its faithful

administration!

the apostle’s charge; or rather the different points of view in which he holds

forth the duties of the gospel ministry?

with all longsuffering and doctrine.”

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The first four of these we have enlarged upon. We now come to the fifth,

— “Do the work of an evangelist.”

The word “evangelist,” in its most comprehensive sense, implies a preacher

of glad tidings, or, in other words, a preacher of the gospel, with all his

concomitant duties. In the apostolic age, it more particularly signified an

extraordinary minister, appointed to assist the apostles in preaching and

publishing the gospel — in watering what the apostles planted: and in this

sense also it contained a very extensive meaning. But, at present, it is

generally applied to those inspired writers who were employed by the Spirit

of God to record the life and actions of our Lord Jesus Christ. We must

here, however, consider the word in its most enlarged sense; for Timothy

was, without doubt, in every point of view, a minister of the gospel.

work, who enters into the minute examination of all the miseries and wants

of his brethren, and labors to find a remedy for them all — represent, if you

can, all the works of salvation and mercy among men, of which such a

minister will be the instrument, through the blood of the covenant and the

grace of the Spirit! He heals those hearts which are sick and alienated from

God: he pierces the darkness with which shame so often covers the

indigent, and in affording them, by the means at least of his benevolent

friends, a secret succor, spares them even the confusion of being relieved:

useful institutions for the instruction or relief of the poor and the stranger,

which come within his circle, find in his care, or in his zeal, resources

which establish them, or which preserve them from falling, and give them a

new solidity. O what public disorders does he prevent; what occasions of

salvation does he improve! He stirs up the pious, and makes them useful in

the conversion or sanctification of others; he presides at every holy

enterprise; he is, as it were, the soul of piety in his circuit; even the greater

part of those sinners who attend his ministry, but still live in sin or vanity,

feel a hope that some day they shall be converted by his means. He

animates all; he finds remedies for all. There is no public good within his

circle, and consistent with his calling, to which he does not sacrifice

himself; no good undertaking which he prevents; no sinner who does not

appear worthy of his zeal. In short, there is nothing which can quench or

stop his divine ardor, or the holy fervor of his love; “and there is nothing

the dead body of Elisha, it instantly revived; those eyes which death had

closed, open again; his tongue is unloosed; and we see him come from the

abode of death, and again enjoy life and light. Alas, my brethren, carcasses

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the most putrefied, souls in which spiritual death and the corruption of sin

have reigned abundantly longer, can hardly approach a holy minister, an

ambassador of God, dead to himself, to the world and all its hopes, but

they instantly, through grace, feel a virtue go from him, a breath of life

which begins to reanimate them, to inspire into them good desires, and to

rouse them from their lethargy; and which, in those who are faithful to these

beginnings, will produce the fruits of grace and salvation.

spirit, his modesty, his ministerial gravity, have such a secret, constant,

powerful in influence, that he may be truly said to be sent for the salvation

of many. It is true, that neither the example nor labors of the holiest

ministers can have the least influence in the regeneration or salvation of

souls without the unction of the Holy Spirit; but the person, the words, the

actions of a devoted ambassador of Christ, are all anointed, and breathe

forth the savor of Jesus’ name. What a happiness must it be to a people

when God raises among them holy ministers, whose deep piety and

crucified lives serve, so to speak, as spectacles to angels and men They are

a continual gospel before their eyes! “Do,” therefore, “the work of an

evangelist.”

how can those ministers even appear to the people as animated with that

divine fire which carries the sparks of grace to the coldest and most

insensible hearts, who themselves are all ice in the practice of every duty;

and who feel not themselves all alive for the salvation of either their

brethren or themselves? If we fill up our public duties with an air of

custom, of weariness, of reluctance, (which is inseparable from a life of

lukewarmness,) and of unfaithfulness in the pastoral office, we shall leave

the same dispositions in those who hear us. Our labors will rouse neither

our faith nor piety, and will leave the same spiritual death on the minds of

our audience. Alas! my brethren, even in a holy and fervent minister, it calls

for prodigies of zeal, application, patience, and labor to bear down all the

obstacles which the world, the devil, and the present corruption of

manners, oppose to the success of his ministry. What then can the

cowardly, idle minister promise himself from his baseness and idleness?

What fruit can he expect from a field to which he never puts but a feeble,

languishing hand; and which seems to be intrusted to him, to be the sport of

his cruel neglect, rather than the object of his care?

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who lives in the spirit of lukewarmness, is unfit for the kingdom of heaven,

and is rejected out of the mouth of Christ, as a lukewarm and disgusting

drink which raises the stomach; what is a minister good for, who does the

particular work of God negligently? What an object of disgust for a God

who is jealous of his gifts! What an afflicting spectacle to that part of the

church of God which beholds it — to see a place in that ministry which is

designed for zeal, for labor, and for the salvation of souls, filled by a

lukewarm, idle minister, instead of a faithful laborer; instead of one who

would have enlarged the kingdom of Jesus Christ who would have

snatched from their miseries a glorious number of sinners, who would have

8:23.

and the foolishness of the cross have triumphed over numerous and great

nations, if those apostolic men who have preceded us had regarded the

oppositions which the people, yea, which the whole pagan world, made to

the progress of the gospel? Where should we have been, if difficulties

insurmountable by human prudence had abated their zeal or suspended their

labors; or if, in the persuasion of finding us as we were, savage and

rebellious, they had unhappily left us to the darkness of our primitive

ignorance? Do you fear inconveniences? But what is there to fear for a

pastor who fills up his ministry with edification and fidelity? “What?” it

may be answered, “Contempt, reproaches, and contradictions.” But these

are his glory, and form part of the present consoling reward of his zeal.

“What?” it may be added, “Evil treatment and insults of various kinds.” But

these are the most honorable seals of his apostleship. I grant, however,

3dly. 1. That all this zeal should be continually guarded; and that the

universal maxim, which binds every private member of the church of

Christ, should be particularly written on the hearts of his ministers — “Let

modesty which should run through the whole character of a minister of

Christ, and should manifest itself in all his words and actions; yea, even

upon those occasions when he most unbends his mind.

ministers who are consecrated to the Lord. The same decency, the same

circumspection, the same majesty, which accompanies them in their public

duties, should follow them everywhere; and as they are everywhere to

consider themselves as the ambassadors of Christ, they ought everywhere

to support the dignity of this character, in the wisdom of their words, in the

chaste decency of their dress, and in the seriousness of all their actions. I

have already, in a former discourse, spoken on this subject; but I would

wish to enlarge a little farther, on account of its importance.

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word a transgression; if the gospel exacts from every private Christian such

circumspection, reserve, and modesty in conversation — what does it not

require from the immediate ministers of Jesus Christ! The lips of ministers

are, next to the word of God, the depositaries of divine knowledge, which

they are incessantly to administer to the people; and when the Spirit of God

calls them to the ministry, he says to them in some sense, as formerly to the

prophet,

“I have put my words in thy mouth, and have covered thee in the

shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the

foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people,”

That is to say, to the end that you may make — as a new heaven and a new

earth, or at least as a part of it, — the people intrusted to your care; that you

may accustom them to regard me as the only God who deserves their

affections and homage; that they may learn to regard themselves as a holy

people, consecrated to me alone; that the heaven and earth which they

behold are the works of my liberal hand, which, with all things they

contain, deserve not their affections; and that I have prepared for them a

heaven infinitely more glorious and eternal, where they shall enjoy, with

my redeemed, pleasures for evermore. What follows from hence but that

our tongue is no more our own; that it is consecrated to the Word of God,

and the edification of the people; that witticisms and vain discourses are

unlawful amusements in the mouths of believers; but that they are

profanations in ours!

but that which I would say, my brethren, is this — that our conversation

should be always marked with a peculiar character of piety, gravity, and

modesty; that, in conversing, we should with a holy joy endeavor to edify

each other; and all around us, with words of love and truth; and that we

should banish from our discourse all profane and immoderate joy, and all

the low and all the genteel pleasantries of the world.

our minds, should have in them a peculiarity of decency, reserve, and

seriousness. I know that both the soul and body need relaxation but those

moments which we give to nature are neither useful nor permitted, but as

they dispose us for our duties, and prepare us for farther toil. Repose is

appointed for us, to the end that we may gain new strength to continue our

course; and therefore every kind of relaxation which tends to estrange us

from it, to discourage us, or to inspire us with a distaste of our toil and

public labors, is to us improper, yea, criminal.

discourse with those words of the apostle, “Ye have not so learned Christ,”

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ministry: it is not thus that you turn into a stumblingblock the sacred

character which you have received from Jesus Christ for their salvation.

Continue, then, my brethren, to conduct yourselves before your people in a

manner worthy the holiness and gravity of your vocation. We live in times

when infidelity moves with gigantic strides; when the licentiousness of the

public manners leaves us nothing to avoid the malignity of suspicion, and

the contempt of the world, but this respectable gravity, modesty, and piety,

supported throughout the minutest particulars of our conduct and manners.

Irreligion is come to a point; and the world is charmed to find so many

ministers like themselves. It seems to be a victory and gain to them, when

they can persuade themselves, or when they can perceive, that any ministers

tread under foot the duties of their station. They see not that the

unfaithfulness and misconduct of ministers consecrated to the service of

religion is the greatest judgment God can inflict upon a people, except the

of us then, my brethren, increase the blindness of the world, by confirming

it in its errors through our example. O! let none of us become stones of

stumbling, and the most grievous plagues to those to whom we should be

guides in the way of salvation!

with the tenderness of fathers, with the vigilance of guides, and with all the

modesty, simplicity, and holiness, which becomes ministers of Jesus

Christ. Let your example, under the grace of God, give you assurance of

the fruit and success of your ministry: appear not occupied or touched with

any thing but their salvation: forget, as it were, your own temporal interests;

or never put them in the balance with the interest of their souls. Consider

yourselves as theirs. Your calling, your mission, your functions, are only

for them: give yourselves then wholly to them, as if you were created only

for their benefit. “Do the work of an evangelist.”

PART 2

I now proceed to the last head of my subject “Make full proof of your

ministry.” So fulfill the whole, that none may charge you with the neglect

of your duty. Let the world see that you make it your own and only work to

win souls.

therefore frequently examine ourselves concerning the purity of our zeal and

of our motives in respect to all the parts of our ministerial office — whether

“we make full proof of our ministry” in the sight of God as well as man?

When we enter on any employment, should we not first inquire, Will God

be glorified by this undertaking? Is it his work which I am entering upon?

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Is that which I purpose to myself; really my duty? Does divine love

influence me to comfort the afflicted, to strengthen the weak, and to bring

sinners to Christ? Does divine zeal urge me to cultivate in secret the fruits of

my public labors; to support the rising conversation by spiritual discourse;

to heal domestic dissensions by the counsels of meekness and wisdom; to

reconcile fathers to their children; to restore to wives the affections of their

husbands; and to carry the peace of Jesus Christ into all the families I visit?

Does the spirit of ministerial vigilance and holy solicitude lead me into every

work of mercy and piety? Do I “make full proof of my ministry?”

Do I prefer “the house of mourning to the house of feasting?”

from him, without running to their succor, and leaving with them at least

some farewell marks of consolation and tenderness? And is he a shepherd,

or a savage, who sees his infirm, perhaps dying sheep, and condescends

not to offer them at least his spiritual assistance? No, my brethren; a pastor

who neglects the sick of his flock must have a heart as hard as a stone, or as

light as vanity. “I was sick,” will Christ say, “and ye visited me not,”

And if a poor sinner on the verge of eternity, though not a member of our

society implore my assistance at that awful period; shall I refuse him my

hand? How little must I know of, or at least how little regard, the value of a

soul, if I do not fly to his rescue? for who knows but he may be called,

even by my instrumentality, at the last hour of the day? And what shall I

answer before the tremendous Judge at his awful bar, when all the intricate

threads of human events are fully unraveled, if I find that that immortal

soul, now lost for ever would have been saved if I had been faithful? Will

not his blood, will not his soul, be required at my hands? God enable us to

“make full proof of our ministry!” But again,

material bread, shall on the great day be placed on the left hand of the

Judge, how can those escape condemnation whose office is to dispense to

them spiritual bread, if they neglect so sacred a charge? I well know that the

generality of our traveling preachers are unable, out of their little pittance, to

afford much to the poor, for the supply of those temporal remedies or

comforts which their miseries demand; and therefore this is not what the

gospel particularly requires of them; nor do the poor in general, who know

them, expect it from them: though I have no doubt but you, my brethren,

give according to your ability, yea, and many of you, as the apostle says,

beyond it; softening at least by your cares, your sensibility, your advice,

and your prayers, the pains and distresses of your poorer brethren, and

suffering and sympathizing with those whom you cannot temporally

relieve. We are, you know, ministers of things future; and the riches which

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God showers upon the people by our means, are the riches of grace and

eternal glory.

Let us then be, if possible, more ready to succor, with our prayers and

advice, those among our people whose poverty incapacitates them from

recompensing our labors, than those who might reward them by temporal

kindnesses, and at the same time least need our counsels. Let us not divide

our cares among our people according to the means they possess to

compensate for them but according to the need they have of the assistance

of our ministry. Let the name of the poor be honorable in our eyes. Let us

not have the hardness of heart to add to the distresses of their situation that

of our neglect and indifference; but let us make ample amends for our want

of power to supply their bodily necessities, by our zeal and assiduity in the

things which relate to their souls: let us make them conscious that their

poverty is a title which only endears them the more to us, as making them

more dependent upon us, and ourselves in consequence more responsible

for them. Let us consider them as the most privileged part of our flock; as,

in their outward condition, most resembling Christ when he abode upon

earth in the flesh. Let us consider ourselves happy in a constant interest in

psalmist. When they are poor in spirit, also, then it is the voice of that dove

which is always heard and answered, that groans within them. Let us suffer

with them in compassionating their pain: let us remember that our mission,

like that of our adorable Redeemer, is peculiarly to the poor. “The Spirit of

the Lord is upon me,” says Christ by Isaiah, “because he hath anointed me

to preach the gospel to the poor; and “this day,” says he in the synagogue,

“Go,” says our Lord to the disciples of John the Baptist,

“and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: the

blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,

and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the

As if he had said to them, Your master is so perfectly acquainted with the

nature of the Messiah’s kingdom, and the entire crucifixion to the pomps

and vanities of the world which its members must necessarily experience,

that one of the strongest proofs to him that I am Christ, will be this — that

“the poor have the gospel preached unto them.” Let us then, my brethren,

be thankful that we labor among a people who are in general poor; for it is

among such that the grace of the Spirit of God is most abundantly shed

abroad. We receive, it is true, but little from their indigence; but the harvest

is always rich for Jesus Christ! Well did the primitive bishop, on the

demand of the Roman emperor, that he should deliver up all the treasures of

his church, bring to him the poor indigent members of his flock, who,

though destitute of worldly comforts, were rich in faith! So it has been, is,

and probably will be, till the great millennial year rushes in upon the world.

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Let us then take delight in daily visiting the poor: let none of us manifest so

little faith and crucifixion to the world as to regard those ministers most

happy who labor among the rich. They may be better paid; but will their

usefulness be greater? They may find those who are most ready, because

most able to supply their temporal wants; but will they find those who are

most ready to profit by their instructions? The thorns and anxiety

accompanying riches, generally choke and stifle the word of God.

barren and ungrateful. While, on the contrary, a minister who faithfully

labors among a poor people, possessing simple and teachable spirits,

penetrated with a love of the great obvious and essential truths of the

gospel, and submissive in their indigence to the divine hand which corrects

them such a one, I say, has the consolation of daily seeing his ministry

abundant in fruits for heaven. Let us then consider it as one of our highest

duties to visit the poor: let us not account our labors in any wise

recompensed, but when they produce the fruits of life and salvation; and let

us not estimate concerning our duties or station, except by the gains we can

make thereby for Jesus Christ our Lord.

may not the minister of the gospel profitably enter into some such soliloquy

as the following? “I can neither through my unfaithfulness damn, nor

through grace save, myself alone. From the time that I enter the holy

ministry, I must necessarily be either a plague sent from God, or permitted

in his wise providence for the punishment of mankind, or a gift from

heaven for their blessing and felicity. I must resemble either that dragon in

the Revelation, who, in falling, drew with him the third part of the stars of

heaven, or that great antitype of the brazen serpent, Jesus Christ, who being

lifted up draws all who believe to himself, and heals all the diseases and

infirmities of the people. I have only this alternative.

“What a most powerful motive is this for fidelity in my office; for

watchfulness over my conduct; for zeal in my ministry; for filial fear

in my situation; for a continual renewal in the spirit of my vocation

for glowing hope, or confusion, in the expectation of the coming of

the great Bishop of souls, who will then demand from me an

account of the use or neglect of my talents, and who will present to

me those souls which he had intrusted to my care, either as my

condemnation, if they have perished through my neglect, or as my

glory and crown if they have under his grace found life and

salvation by the means of my ministry!”

“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things

are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure,

whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,

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if there be any virtue. and if there be any praise, think on these

depository of faith and truth, the holy word of God. Draw from the pure

sources, from the Scriptures, all the principles of holiness and morality, by

which you should regulate your own conduct, and that of your flocks.

Never depart from those rules of truth, without which all that bears the

name of piety is nothing but hypocrisy, and a scandal to others.

manners and conversations. Let nothing which is in the least degree

indecent, or contrary to the sanctity of your ministry, ever escape you. Bear

always on your countenance a holy modesty, and that ministerial gravity,

which make religion respectable even to those who love it not: avoid all

suspicious familiarities; and remember, that your willfully saying or doing

any thing which may cause suspicion, is a crime in a minister, which

innocence itself cannot justify.

equity be manifested in all your conduct, disinterestedness in all the

exercises of your ministry, prudence and love in your zeal, and an equal

affection (as ministers) toward all the faithful who are in trusted to your

care, as you are equally the spiritual fathers of them all; no animosity,

except against vice; no predilection, but in favor of holiness: no acceptance

of persons; but let the wants alone of your flocks regulate all your cares and

all your attention.

for all the ordinances of the gospel, by administering them yourselves in the

fear of God and with holy dignity. On all such occasions, appear as the

elders before the throne of the Lamb, struck with the majesty of God, and

expecting a revelation of his love to your own souls and those of the people;

and let such modesty, awe, and depth of piety be manifested in all your

administrations, that your people may learn from your whole deportment

what dispositions are necessary for themselves on such occasions. But,

above all, and in all, and through all, let us press upon every one the

necessity of holiness. Let us never forget our calling — that we were called

and sent forth to raise a holy people. Let all your doctrines, and all your

discipline, all your labors, and all your conversation, center in this. Let this

be the grand burden of your testimony — “Without holiness no man shall

see the Lord.”

eyes of your people, if you would be useful to them; amiable, not by

improper familiarities, but by partaking of their afflictions, and becoming

their comforters in all their distresses. Gain their hearts, and draw their

souls to Jesus Christ. Render not your sacred function odious by the

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rudeness, the moroseness, or the caprice of your humors; nor contemptible,

by a baseness of sentiment. Refuse not upon any occasion, to the believers

or penitents who are committed to your charge, your assistance or advice,

since you owe to them your very life. Be their consolation, and they will be

yours; love them as your children, and they will love you as their fathers.

can preserve your reputation pure and spotless in the judgment of your

people. Abstain from every thing, even the most lawful, which can become

a cause of offense to your brethren. Remember that the fruit of your

ministry is in a great measure attached to the good opinion they have of

you. Disgrace not, therefore, our holy religion, by disgracing yourselves.

Let your examples prepare the way for the success of your instructions. Let

no one have occasion to reproach you for doing that which you are obliged

to testify against to others; and let the sweet savor of your lives spread

through your circuits, and become itself a constant censure of the vices or

faults of others.

In short, my brethren, if the remembrance of the glorious army of martyrs,

whose blood became the seed of the church, can affect you; if the example

of your late venerable father in the gospel [John Wesley], and of the first

Methodist preachers, who endured the heat and burden of the day, and bore

the ark of the testimony against an opposing world, can move you; if you

have ruling within you (as I doubt not you have) the principles of holiness

and truth — “if there be any virtue, think on these things.” If our most

excellent discipline, so faithfully enforced by your predecessors, inspire

you with a sacred emulation; if you be ashamed to degenerate from the holy

fortitude of those who have gone before you, whose praise is in all our

churches, — “if there be any praise, think on these things.” Then, under

almighty grace, you will continue to do honor to your holy ministry; you

will be the blessed means of sanctifying the people, and “the God of peace

will be ever with you.

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DISCOURSE 4

PART 1.

one of those obligations which are peculiar to the ministry of the gospel. It

is one of the most essential duties of Christianity. Every real Christian is a

man of prayer: his views, his desires, his hopes, his affections, yea, even

his conversation, are all in heaven. Every Christian is a citizen of the world

to come, and a stranger here below: all exterior objects which here surround

him should be to him only so many ties and obstacles, which, retarding his

course and prolonging his banishment, ought to increase and inflame his

desire after his country: all the temptations which the world offers or throws

it his way, all his secret conflicts with his passions — all these should lead

him to lift up his eyes continually to heaven; there to send up his sighs and

prayers, and to address himself in secret, and in every place, to that faithful,

heavenly, invisible witness of all his dangers, and all his troubles, from

whose protection alone he expects his consolation and his strength. Every

Christian, then, is a man of prayer; and he who lives not in the exercise and

spirit of prayer, is a man without God, without divine worship, without

religion, without hope; and if this be an incontestable truth, what

instructions are not due to the people, to animate them to the love and

exercise of prayer.

homage of love which we render to God in publishing his greatness and

loving kindness, or in soliciting his mercies and succors — if all other

ordinances of the gospel are only helps and assistants to this spirit of

prayer; if all external worship be established only to form of the simple

believer the man of devotion, the man of prayer; if he who calls himself a

Christian, and possesses not this spirit, and of course lives not in the

exercise of it, be without religion, without God, without hope; what a

monster must be the minister of this religion, an interpreter of its laws, an

expounder of its doctrines, a dispenser of its graces, a public intercessor

before God for the faithful, if he himself be not a man of prayer; if he be not

faithful to this essential duty! O, my brethren, if there be any among you

who do not feel the full power of these truths, what cause have we to

lament on your account, before that holy dove, that true source of the spirit

of prayer, who groans and prays incessantly in the hearts and by the

mouths of his ministers!

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we are informed, that all the apostles were resolved to give themselves

continually to prayer: and from the gospels we find that our Lord himself

spent whole nights in prayer, on mountains, and in other secret places,

of the frequent and habitual exercise of this supporting, nourishing,

quickening, indispensable duty? But I have known many of you, my

brethren, for years; and am confident that one of the most leading features

of your character is the exercise of this holy duty in its spirit and power. I

therefore chiefly desire to stir up your pure minds to remembrance: and O

that I may be the means, under divine grace, by this little mite of love, of

confirming you in your present spirit: yea, of animating you to still greater

fidelity and to higher degrees of fervor in this blessed conversation with

Heaven.

prayer and study, always accompanied to the sincere minister of the gospel

with the divine light, which truly renders us lights to the people. Prayer

may be termed the science of the heart, that alone renders useful those

studies which form the science of the mind.

confirmed to them by the infallible inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God,

which induced the college of apostles to come to the determination in my

text, “We will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of

the word:” not that they did not before live in the exercise, and spirit, and

very life of prayer; but they were determined now to lay aside every weight

which duty could dispense with, and give themselves up more entirely than

ever to this holy communion with God.

pure love, taken an active share in all the minutest parts of the temporal

affairs of the church: but a murmuring arising between the Grecians (that is

to say, such converted Jews as had been dispersed abroad among the

Greeks) and the Hebrews, in respect to the distribution of the church’s

money among their widows respectively, the apostles embrace this

opportunity of shaking off that heavy burden, which so intruded upon the

more important parts of their ministerial and apostolic functions; declaring

that they would give themselves “continually to prayer and to the ministry

of the word”

delivered up the management of the poor, and other inferior points, to the

direction of subordinate officers of the church, they still reserved in

themselves the ultimate power of decision in all matters which they judged

of sufficient importance to call for their interference: this is evidently clear

from the following chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. But we proceed to

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show how indispensably necessary the duty of constant prayer, which the

apostles themselves could by no means dispense with, is for every minister

of the gospel; having already enlarged upon the other subject, of the

ministry of the word, in my former discourses.

continual prayer, as it respects ourselves, particularly considered in our

ministerial capacity; and then, secondly, as it respects our flocks.

can only be overcome by the exercise and life of prayer.

If we would fill up our ministry with fidelity, we must wholly devote

ourselves to it; we must sacrifice our ease, our rest, to fill up its various

calls; we cannot dispose of our time as we please: it is a holy servitude,

which makes us no longer our own, but wholly the people’s: we must be

able to say with the apostle, that heat and cold, fatigue, difficult roads,

hunger and thirst, are some of the fruits of our ministry, and signs of our

apostleship. We even often labor among the ungrateful: our pains are often

recompensed with indifference, unteachableness, and murmurs; yea, they

sometimes draw upon us the aversion of those whose salvation we seek.

When we are under these trials, we have reason to guard against disgust

and discouragement. We are ready, perhaps, to throw up the great work in

which we are engaged, when we see not the end of it, and but little of the

fruits. On such occasions, self-love, unsupported by the wished for

success, reclaims its rights, and secretly insinuates, that such painful and

apparently almost useless cares cannot be our duties. Now how can we

possibly support ourselves under such temptations to disgust as these are,

which are dangerous, and so frequent in the course of a long and laborious

ministry, if we do not continually renew our strength at the feet of Jesus

Christ — If we have not the consolation of continually drawing near to him

to open to him all our sorrows and discouragements, as to the great

Shepherd whose place we occupy. It is there we shall be confounded before

him, for making any account of the light troubles of our functions, when

compared to those of the first propagators of Christianity, who sacrificed

their lives for the truth: it is there we shall blush to have indulged a

temptation to lay down our arms almost before we had begun the combat,

and to have been disheartened and discouraged by labors so light; when

those holy ministers of God had defied tribulations, anguish, hunger,

nakedness, persecution, fires, gibbets, and all the fury of tyrants, who

would have separated them from the love of God in Christ Jesus their Lord:

it is from thence, my brethren, that we should always return with a new

taste for all the functions of our office — with a new zeal for the salvation

of souls: returning from thence, what before appeared burdensome and

painful, would now become light, yea, delightful to us; and the fatigues and

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contradictions of sinners, inseparable from the duties of our office, would

be to us a most comfortable proof of our calling to the ministry of the word.

Let none of us, my brethren, deceive ourselves: without the constant

exercise and life of prayer, we continually feel every thing which is

disagreeable and distressing in our ministry: we draw in a yoke which

overpowers us: we bear with reluctance the burden and heat of the day. But

by prayer all is sweetened: the yoke is no more heavy: the labors increase;

but the pain, the disgust, the discouragements, vanish away. You

sometimes, my brethren, perhaps, are ready to complain of the oppression

and weariness of Spirit which the multitude and difficulties of your

avocations bring upon you, and of your inability to fulfill your duties: but if

you address yourselves constantly to him who changes our weakness into

strength. If you be faithful to the duty of prayer, these difficulties will

disappear; the mountains will become plains; you will find your selves new

men; and you will no longer complain, but that you have not labored or

suffered enough for Jesus Christ.

dissipation of mind which is, almost unavoidably, more or less produced

by the constant administration of exterior duties, I will venture to assert that

the exercise and spirit of prayer can alone preserve us from its bad effects.

It is in reality but too true, that the inward man weakens, and the life of God

decays in the soul, in the midst of all the public exercises and constant

activity which our ministerial office requires, if we do not continually give

ourselves to prayer. We are real losers ourselves, while we give up

ourselves incessantly to the wants of others; we lose the secret and hidden

life of faith, in which consists the whole soul and life of piety: we accustom

ourselves to be all outward, always from home, and never within our own

hearts: we at last appear before the people to perform the public duties of

our office with dissipated spirits, divided by a variety of foreign and

tumultuous images which occupy them; and we no more experience the

silence of the senses and of the imagination, in respect to every thing but the

great and solemn work on which we are entering, which is so necessary to

call us back to a holy recollection, and to a secret consciousness of our utter

unworthiness and incapacity of ourselves to stand between the living and

the dead. Alas! we are no more acquainted with these things! Thus, in

laboring always for others, and hardly ever for ourselves, the spiritual

strength of the soul wears out we live entirely out of ourselves; we give

ourselves up to this life of hurry and agitation; and we at last become

incapable of any profitable communion with ourselves or with God; we

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even seek for occasions and pious pretexts to fly from retirement; we cannot

be in any wise comfortable without the company of others, and are

immediately tired with God alone.

blameable in them in the judgment of the world, appear in a very different

light in the sight of God. Alas! we quite exhaust our spiritual strength, if we

be not continually repairing it at the footstool of the throne of grace; all our

cares and solicitudes are confined to external things; we act and stir

outwardly for God, but we do not commune and wrestle privately with

him, though true love thinks all hours too short in communing with its

Beloved. We run, but we run alone: the Lord, whom we neglect to call to

our assistance, leaves us to our own weakness; and our ordinary humor,

temper, vivacity, vanity, and love of popularity, rule us, rather than the

genuine love of our duty, and the love of son Is.

save us from these rocks: and, without neglecting in the least degree the

necessary functions of our ministry, we may live in this blessed exercise;

we may continually carry with us that spirit of piety and recollection, which

moderates, regulates, and sanctifies all our external duties, and even makes

them so many preparations for returning with still greater advantage to

retirement, recollection, and communion with God. It is for these reasons,

that we are repeatedly informed in the gospels, that our Lord warned his

disciples to watch and pray, that they might not enter into temptation,

necessary for the salvation of every private Christian, we ministers, more

than others, have continually need of the help of prayer. The more our

duties lead us into the midst of the world, the more do they expose us to its

vanity and seductions, if they be not supported by the spirit of prayer. It is

not sufficient, that we are not infected or debilitated by the contagious air

which we must there breathe; we are required to appear among men, clothed

with more strength, more modesty, more virtue, more holiness, than the

generality of professors themselves, in the midst of whom we must daily

be: we ought everywhere to be the sweet savor of Jesus Christ. But how

difficult must it be for a minister, if the habit of prayer has not established in

him a certain solidity of virtue, to find himself continually in the midst of

the abuses and dissipations of a vain world, to hear daily the apologies

which the world makes for itself and not be shaken or weakened in the

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spiritual life thereby! He carries with him a heart void of all those deep

sentiments of religion which the habit of prayer alone can engrave upon the

soul, and influenced by all those inclinations which can render the world

amiable to him! There are but too few among believers, who do not,

sometimes, feel themselves inwardly seduced and shaken by the objects

which surround them: what then can that minister do, who carries with him

but his weakness and his frailties? And though decency may keep him

within certain bounds; yet still the world is in his heart; he adopts it for his

own; and there is nothing now to be observed, even in his public

administrations, of that firmness and becoming majesty which announce the

minister and ambassador of God: he is now like salt which has lost its

savor; and which is not only unable to preserve other things from

corruption, but is itself changed into rottenness and putrefaction.

fidelity to that sacred and indispensable means of grace, however

irreprehensible he may otherwise be in the eyes of men, is but the shadow

of a minister; he is but a bare representation of a pastor of the flock of

Christ: he has not the soul, the reality of that holy vocation; and his whole

ministry has nothing in it but an empty title; which neither binds him to

God, with whom he has no communication, nor to the church of God, to

which he is of no manner of use.

not mean that this holy exercise should occupy the greatest part of the day:

he owes himself to his flock, and his public duties ought never to suffer by

the length of his prayers. But I understand hereby that prayer should always

precede his public duties, and sanctify them; I mean, also, that the spirit of

prayer should accompany him throughout; that he should in every thing,

even in the most indifferent of his actions, show forth that “inward man,

that secret commerce with God, wherein consists the essence of religion

and piety; that he render his ministry in all places respectable, and make his

very presence alone an instruction to all those who approach him. Behold

what I understand by the spirit of prayer, so essential for a minister of the

church of God.

passions of the world, to destroy the empire of the devil among men, and to

establish and to extend the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Our ministry snatches

us from external repose, and clothes us with armor: but our arms are only

prayer and faith working by love. It is from these divine arms, under grace,

that all our instructions, all our labors, and all our efforts, derive their

whole strength and success: without these, we are but weak, rash men,

exposed without defense in the midst of enemies, with whom we ought to

have been prepared to fight; and soon become the miserable sport of their

seductions, and of the snares which they continually throw in our way: that

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is to say, we soon ourselves become like to them, whom we ought to have

converted to God and gained for Jesus Christ. Like minister, like people!

Would to God my observations were never verified. But, alas! from long

experience in the ministry of the word, I am indubitably convinced, that a

minister, without the spirit of prayer and habitual recollection, cannot long

be supported in the divine life; he becomes dissipated; he neglects his

duties, especially where a cross accompanies them; or he performs them

without piety, without any of that deep inward sentiment of true religion,

and often without that respect and holy dignity which the world itself

expects: till at last he becomes a stumbling-block and an offense to the

flock, and sometimes even a public reproach to the church to which he

belongs.

PART 2.

necessity of our living in the constant exercise and spirit of prayer, as it

respects the interests of our flocks.

Are necessary, not only to preserve us from disgust and discouragement in

our duties, and from all the dangers with which we are surrounded in all

our pastoral engagements, in our intercourse with the world, and otherwise;

but also to assure fruit and success to our ministry.

were possible, in respect to any prayerless person;) it is still more necessary

for the church of God that we be useful to others. Now, you well know,

my brethren, that we may cultivate the ground, we may plant and water, but

we expect it if we be not faithful in asking it — if we do not, by our fervent

and continual prayers, draw down from heaven those blessings on our

labors which alone can make them fruitful? Too many labor without fruit,

without success, because they labor all alone, and as if the success

depended only on themselves. They expect it from their own gifts, their

own cares, and the improvement of their own understandings. They call not

Him to their assistance, who alone can give the blessing to all their toils,

and render them useful.

when they fill up all the public parts of their office, is entirely owing to the

want of living in the spirit of prayer. They think they have discharged every

thing required, when they have fulfilled all the external duties of their

ministry; and never infer from the little fruit of their labors that there is some

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secret vice or essential neglect which renders them useless. Thus, while

they engage not God by their prayers in the success of their undertakings;

while they begin them without solemnly and earnestly addressing

themselves to him, that he himself would prepare the hearts of those they

are going to instruct — they spend their days, as at one time did the

apostles, in casting their nets and taking nothing. They live, perhaps, a long

and painful life, (if they do not entirely plunge into the world,) and at last

die, with having done little, if any thing at all, in the gaining of immortal

souls for Jesus Christ.

who accustoms not himself to live within the veil — who comes not

constantly to the throne of grace, there to fill himself with the love of those

truths which he is about to declare, and with that spirit of unction which

alone can render them lovely and profitable to the people — to draw from

thence that affecting zeal, that grace, that strength, which is irresistible?

What success, I say, can he possibly promise himself, who comes to

address his audience as from God, who yet never himself speaks to God?

What dryness in his discourses! He announces truths; but they come from

his mouth, and not from his heart; nor are they those which the Father has

revealed to him in secret. He instructs with spirit; but it is with the spirit of

man, and not with the Spirit of God. He shows forth the truth; but he does

not make it amiable. Those external actions which he gives himself in order

to persuade, do not even appear to persuade, to touch, to penetrate himself.

A spiritual person easily perceives that he speaks a strange language, which

is not drawn from the bottom of his heart. Solomon, from the language of

the two women, quickly discovered the true mother. It is very easy for a

truly spiritual person to distinguish between a true and a false shepherd,

from their language and discourses — to determine which is the true father

of the flock; which is he who speaks the language of paternal love, who

bears his children on his heart; who is continually employed before God in

their behalf, and who is abundantly more jealous of their safety and

salvation than of his own titles of shepherd, minister, or ambassador of

Christ. And I appeal to you, my brethren, for the truth of my observation

— that a holy minister, a man of prayer, with only moderate talents, will be

more successful, will leave his congregation more affected and influenced

by his discourse, than many others whose talents are vastly superior, but

who have not by prayer drawn down that unction, that tender taste of piety,

which alone knows how to speak to the heart. A minister speaks very

differently the truths he loves, and which he is accustomed to meditate

upon, and taste all his days, at the feet of Jesus Christ! The heart has a

language which nothing can imitate. In vain does a minister thunder from

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the pulpit, and put his studied actions and forced clamors in the place of zeal

and piety. We may always perceive the man: we may always feel that it is a

fire which descends not from heaven. All that vehement and forced noise in

the preacher never announces the descent of the Spirit of God upon the

hearts of those who are assembled to hear. I am not now speaking of the

genuine cries of sinners and mourners in Zion, when struck and humbled

under the word. I well know that thousands, in these lands, can refer,

under grace, their conviction or conversion to those times of weeping, of

melting, of crying, of apparent confusion in the sight of the world, but of

blessed order in the sight of God. I speak only against the substituting, on

the one hand, of human wisdom and human art, or, on the other, of noise

and clamor, for the unction of the Holy One of Israel.

repeat the question — what success can our discourses produce, if the

habit, and life, and spirit of prayer draw not down upon them that grace,

that unction, which alone makes them useful to those who hear? Without

this, the whole is but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The preacher

speaks only to the ears of his audience, or at best to their understandings,

merely because the Spirit of God speaks not by his mouth. The spirit by

which he speaks, and which animates his tongue, is not that spirit of

unction, of force, of fire, which, as it formerly moved on the face of the

waters, so now moves upon the passions of the heart quiet in its sins,

troubles it, agitates it, and then separates and clears up the chaos. It is in

vain for him to thunder or borrow his zeal from without — throughout the

whole, he only, as the apostle speaks, beats the air: his language is as cold,

as barren, as insipid as his heart; and the ministry of the word is no longer

to him but a forced duty, which disgusts him, which overwhelms him, and

from the labor of which he excuses himself as much as possible; or

otherwise it is a theater of vanity, where he rather seeks for the vile

commendations of those that hear him than for their conversion and

salvation.

the truths of God, who has never tasted them himself, or does not at least

now taste them at the footstool of the throne? How can he ever inspire the

people with a love of prayer, or a conviction of the necessity of it, who

experiences not the consolations, nor feels the wants, which make the habit

of prayer so essential to every true believer? How can he form real

Christians, that is to say, spiritual men, “whose life is hid with Christ in

God,” — he, whose whole life is a life out of himself and out of God, and

whom the life of prayer does not cause to enter into himself, and into an

examination of his own heart? No, my brethren! Take from a minister the

spirit of prayer, and you take from him his soul, his strength, his life: he is

no more than a dead carcass, which quickly infects those who approach it.

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great atonement, in their behalf.

with God for the people, when the want of the spirit of prayer has shut up

all access to his throne; when they have not contracted, by their fidelity in

the exercise of prayer, that holy familiarity with him which authorizes them

to lay before him with confidence the wants of their flocks, and to bring

down into the hearts of the penitent the blessings of pardoning love, and

into those of believers the blessings of establishing grace, strength against

temptation, and the perfect love of God; in a word, to use a sacred violence

to the mercy of God in Christ, and to speak to him all the language of

tenderness, pity, faith, and zeal in behalf of their flocks that language which

the constant habit of prayer alone can teach us?

can we imagine that less prayer is necessary to overturn the kingdom, the

power, yea, the very nature of the devil in the souls of men? What is then

sufficient for this? I answer, faith and prayer, with the promises and

blessings annexed thereto. “Verily, I say unto you,” says Christ to his

disciples,

“if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is

done to the fig-tree; but also, if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be

thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all

things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall

O that we had all of us but faith and piety sufficient to give full credit to the

word of God! then should we know and be astonished at the truth of those

words of our Savior,

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works

that I do, shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do,

because I go unto my Father: and whatsoever ye shall ask in my

name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If

Accordingly, the great apostle, that close copier of the life of Christ, writes

to the Colossians,

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“We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that you might be

filled with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual

and to the Thessalonians,

“What thanks can we render to God again for you, etc., night and

day praying exceedingly that we might see your face, and might

3:9,10.

And we may be assured that the apostle would never have prayed so

continually and exceedingly for his flocks, if he had not been certain that his

prayers would be heard for many of them in a glorious manner.

them without ceasing? Is it not a duty incumbent on us to lay before God

the wants of our flocks, and to solicit for them the riches of his mercy?

Should we not groan before him by reason of the vices with which too

many of our hearers among whom we labor are infected; and which all our

cares and all our zeal are not able to correct? Are we not bound to ask at the

throne strength for the weak, compunction for hard-hearted sinners, and

perseverance for the righteous? The more numerous the wants of our

people, the more earnest and frequent should be our prayers. We should

never appear before God, but, like the high-priest of the law, bearing before

the Most High the names of the tribes written on our hearts; that is to say,

the names of the people intrusted to our care: this should always be a

principal subject of our prayers. Such is the order of the dispensation of

grace. Though every genuine Christian is a king and priest to God and the

Father, ministers especially are the public conduit-pipes, through which the

divine grace and blessings run to the people: they form the grand public

resource, by the instrumentality of which the goodness of God in Christ

corrects the disorders which reign among men.

intimate and inseparable duty of a gospel minister: it is, if I may so speak,

the soul of his office: it is, under the grace of God, his only safety. This

alone sweetens all the distastes and discouragements he meets with: this

alone guards him from all the dangers with which he is surrounded from his

intercourse with the world, or from the spirit of professors themselves: this

alone, under grace, assures success to his ministry; alone imparts the divine

unction to his discourses; alone enables him to give a taste of the divine

truths to the people, having first tasted them himself in communion with his

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God; alone qualifies him to plead successfully with God in behalf of his

flock; and therefore is an absolutely indispensable debt which he owes to

his people.

I shall now conclude the whole with a few general deductions from what

has been advanced.

only in a formal manner at set seasons, to satisfy a hardened conscience, is

no pastor; he is a stranger, who is nowise interested by the wants of his

flock: the people who are intrusted to his care are not his children; they are

poor orphans without a father; his heart, his bowels, say nothing in their

behalf; he loves the title which puts them under his direction, but he loves

not that which is a grand means of their conversion and salvation: he loves

not the office of a shepherd he loves not the flock: for if he loved it, could

he omit any essential duty in behalf of the faithful, the mourners, or the

sinners, intrusted to his care, to the end that none of those whom the Father

had given him might perish? What say you, my brethren? A pastor, who

lives not in the exercise of prayer for his people, not only loves them not,

but deprives them of that which they have a right to exact from him: in

depriving them of his prayers he deprives them of a resource to which God

is always pleased to adjoin many graces, many blessings: he fills the place

of a holy shepherd, whose prayers would have drawn down a thousand

blessings on the poor flock, and is absolutely guilty, in a great degree, of all

the crimes which the prayers of that holy man would have prevented.

Examine, therefore, if you be faithful in representing to God all the wants

of your people; if you be solicitous, importunate, to draw down upon them

the gracious regard of a good God. O, brethren, the fervent prayers of a

faithful pastor are rarely useless. That God, who has charged us to pray for

our people, has also promised to hear us.

(conscious how inapplicable it is to most, if not all of you, my brethren) —

“How can a traveling preacher have much leisure for prayer, in the midst of

the vast multiplicity of business which a circuit requires?” Alas! In the midst

of all our labors and cares, how many vacant, unemployed moments have

we? Can a pastor, an ambassador of Christ to mankind, God’s minister,

charged with the important office of presenting the wishes and prayers of

the congregation before the throne, not have time to present his own — a

dispenser of the doctrines and graces of the gospel not hold constant

intercourse with Him who has intrusted to him this glorious ministry, and

in the name of whom he speaks and acts — never render an account to God

of the gifts and celestial riches with which he has been intrusted! The royal

again,

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“Evening and morning and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud:

Now, can any of us imagine that the concerns of a mighty empire, which

lay on the mind of the royal psalmist, were less than the care of a circuit?

Again, the Scripture informs us that Daniel, when prime minister of the

greatest kingdom in the world,

“kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed

O that the Lord would now pour out upon us all, more abundantly than

ever, the spirit of grace and supplication!

of prayer which we so much press upon you, as the privilege and

consolation of those souls, retired into themselves, who are occupied in

meditating on the wonders of the law and grace of God; and who taste, far

from the world, and in the secret places of his tabernacle, what happiness

they enjoy who love nothing in comparison to him, and who hold

communion incessantly with him. That which is essential to us, is the spirit

of prayer, which we ought to carry with us continually and into all our

duties: that which is particularly requisite for us, is, before we enter on our

public offices, always to go to the feet of Jesus Christ, there to fill

ourselves with that spirit which enables us to perform our duties holily for

ourselves, and usefully for others: it is, when we have finished our public

duties, to go for some precious moments to refresh ourselves before God,

and there to recover fresh strength to begin them again with new zeal: it is,

to accustom ourselves to this secret and almost perpetual intercourse with

God; to find him everywhere; to find ourselves always with him; and in

every place, and every thing, to find occasion to raise ourselves up to him.

Behold in what sense a minister of the gospel should be a man of prayer. O,

my brethren, if this spirit of prayer animate not all our duties, we shall have

much reason to complain while we are performing all that is painful in

them, and omitting the only thing which can soften them, support us under

them, and give them, under God, the wished-for success.

pastor; I mean one who does not live in the life, and spirit, and exercise of

prayer; one who is governed by a spirit of dissipation, destitute of the spirit

of prayer and recollection; who is kept only by the fear of man from falling

into scandalous disorders! What assistance can this unfortunate people

promise themselves from such a minister! Can he administer to them those

words of piety, unction, and consolation, which can only be received from

Him “in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells for the church which

is his body?” Can he successfully oppose the vices and public disorders

which surround him? O! to be properly affected by these, he must be filled

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by that zeal which is the flame of love; he must feel the value of the souls

among which he labors: but, to have a heart susceptible of this zeal and this

sympathy, he must be often softened and melted down at the foot of the

cross, in meditating on the price which these souls have cost our adorable

Redeemer. I therefore once more say, in what a miserable state is that

unfortunate people who are cursed with a prayerless minister! He should

have been like a salubrious cloud, placed between the heavens and the

precious field confided to his care. He should, by the habitual exercise of

prayer, have received from on high those holy influences with which he

should incessantly have watered, enriched, and rendered fruitful, that land

which he is charged to cultivate. But, having no communication with

heaven by prayer, he is only one of those “clouds without water, carried

imparts nothing, because he receives nothing: or, if he do impart any thing,

it is only some dreadful rumor, a stench and a public noise of his scandal

and fall!

sight of them through the course of our lives. The spirit of prayer is the

to God — To raise us up to him: and shall our spirit and our heart only be

unmoved, in the midst of so many sacred employments, which call us back

to him: in the midst of so many graces and lovingkindnesses as we are

continually endeavoring to dispense in the ministry of the word, and which

flow from him alone: in the midst of so many errors, disorders, and vices,

which we daily see increasing among the people who surround us, and

which call so loud upon us to implore his pity, and to have recourse to Him

alone who can correct them? All these things considered is it possible for

any one of us to regard a secret and constant intercourse with God as a pain

and a cross; and in respect to present the experience, be obliged to consider

grand employment, his safety, his first and perpetual duty; and, I may add,

is, under grace, the grand source of his consolation. Our instructions will

be always barren, if they be not watered with our tears and prayers. Even if

our gifts be small, but we support them by our prayers, our defects will be

in a great measure supplied ,and divine unction become the blessed

substitute.

who is not in love with prayer, is not a minister of the church of God: he is

a dry tree, which occupies in vain a place in Christ’s garden: he is an

enemy, and not a father, of the people, he is a stranger, who has taken the

place of the the shepherd, and to whom the salvation of the flock is an

indifferent thing. Be then, my brethren, faithful in prayer, and your

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ministry will be more and more useful; your labors will be more and more

delightful to you; and the evils of the church of Christ, and of the world in

general, will the daily diminish.

“O my God, give to all the ministers of thy gospel a tender and

paternal heart toward their people; then will they always know how

to address thee in their behalf; then will their zealous spirits be one

continual prayer, speaking to thee for the souls which lie so near to

their hearts! But, more particularly, bless the preachers of our

connection, throughout Europe and America, with the abundance of

thy grace, and of this spirit of prayer. Glory be given to thee, thou

hast already bestowed much of it upon them: O! preserve it, increase

it, enflame it, till their very life be one constant sacrifice to thee; till,

by being daily stamped with brighter and brighter characters of

thyself, they continually bring down, like thy servant Moses, a

bright shining from the Mount.”