Warmed into life and vigor
Warmed into life and vigor
Warmed into life and vigor by the heat of a zeal for God, not according to a knowledge of our heart's deep treachery and desperate wickedness — we may nourish and carry in our bosoms the canker worm which drinks up all our spirituality and that feeds at the root of all our usefulness — while we wonder and marvel that none believe our report and that to none is the arm of the Lord revealed.
Ah, brethren, where is the holiest of our sacred brotherhood, who has not deplored in secret before God, the existence of some infirmity of the flesh or of the spirit, the effort to bring which in subjection to the law of Christ has cost many a severe and painful struggle, and has consumed many a lonely hour in strong crying and tears.
Oh, let us not be deceived! Because we are ministers — we are not the less men; and because we are by habit and profession necessarily and constantly occupied in the contemplation of divine and heavenly things and dwell much in the region of a coming and an eternal world — we are not the less exposed to the deadening influence of the things that are carnal, or the less secure against the soft blandishments of a world now passing away.
We must attach no mysterious sanctity to our office. It neither conveys grace into our own souls, nor does it qualify us to convey grace into the souls of others. "We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God, and not to us." Our own holiness springs from the grace given to us by Jesus Christ; and the advance of our people in sanctification, will be proportioned to their spiritual and experimental knowledge of Christ, as made of God unto them wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
We are equally in danger of forgetting that not only are we partakers of a like degenerate nature with all the saints of God — but that also we are partakers in holy alliance with them of the same renewed nature. The indwelling of the life of God forms the basis of our ministerial character. We can only credit the validity of our call, as we are assured that we have "passed out of death into life." This divine life contains the germ of all that is holy and elevated in our work — even as the seedling enfolds the flower, or as the acorn envelopes the oak. This germ of divine life involves its principles of action, supplies its impelling motives, strengthens for the sacrifices which it demands, fortifies against the temptations by which it is assailed, feeds the hidden flame of our love and zeal and devotion, and imparts a character and a tone to the discharge of all the holy functions of our office.
Of what importance, then, is it, my brethren, that the life of God in our souls be healthy, vigorous, and growing! It is the heart of our work — the center of its power. We are true ministers of Christ — only as we are divinely called; we are ministers of strength — only as we live by the faith of the Son of God; and we are holy ministers — only as this life is healthy, active, and influential.
We have thus far presented to view, imperfectly we are aware — a state of lessening spirituality, as developed in the low tone of our personal piety. Let us briefly glance at its effects as traceable in the practical discharge of our work. Although the evidences of a deteriorating piety here may not be so marked in their form or conspicuous to the eye — they are not the less decided in their character or painful in their consequences.
Externally, there may be nothing tending to awaken suspicion that the life of God in our soul is passing through a process of decline. The appropriate functions of our office shall be going forward with the utmost regularity and zeal; the study shall witness to the wearisome hours of hard reading and severe thought; the pulpit shall be regularly and ably filled; the ordinances shall be duly and seriously administered; the pastoral duties systematically and affectionately discharged — and yet a faithful, honest, and close examination of our souls would probably detect an alarming distance from God in the habitual frame of our mind: but little real, close communion with Him in secret prayer; coldness, deadness, gathering and congealing around the spirit, a waning love for and delight in our work; a decreasing sense of individual and ministerial responsibility; and a lessening apprehension of the nearness and solemnity of eternity.
To so great a degree may the anointing oil have evaporated from our minds; so formal, cold, and mechanical may be the spirit with which the duties of our office are discharged — we shall be found to go forward in a work which might "fill an angel's hand, and which filled a Savior's heart" — with but the slow and dying vibrations of the pendulum, when the power which first set it in motion has ceased to exist.
And oh, my brethren, with no power to move but that which is artificial — with no love to our work but that which is professional, with no interest in its discharge but that which is selfish, and with no desire of success but that which spreads far our own petty fame — to what low, contemptible drudgery is our high office reduced! No galley slave is more pitiable than we! And yet such must be the certain, and such the melancholy influence upon the practical performance of our ministerial and pastoral duties — of a declension of the life of God in the soul .
Every department of our work will be affected by this moral paralysis. Along the whole line of duty, the convulsive shock will be felt. Each time we sit down to prepare our discourse, on every occasion that we ascend the pulpit, at every hallowed season that we administer the holy ordinances, every visit we pay to the sick and the afflicted — a feeling of disgust, a sense of oppressiveness, and an air of heartlessness — will take the place of that generous, holy, and supreme devotion to our work which ever distinguishes him whose whole soul is absorbed in it, on whom the anointing oil, ever fresh and fragrant, richly rests, and who, with the holy Payson, feels "that nothing else, comparatively, is worth knowing or making known but Jesus Christ and Him crucified."
Listless indifference will invest the discharge of every spiritual duty; languor will mark the formation of every benevolent plan, and failure will follow as the result of every well-meant effort. The heart fostering the disease of spiritual declension — it is but to be expected that its pulses will transmit through all arteries of the body, a sickly and feeble impulse. Oh how, then, can we be able, holy, and successful ministers of the New Testament — while the life of God droops in our souls? In vain we assume the air of devotedness, zeal, and sanctity — it may serve to maintain for a while, our position with our people; they may be deceived, but the searching eye of God pierces the deep veil of hypocrisy!
We wave the censer before the Lord as we are accustomed, but the "fire" that glows in it is "strange." We preach — but it is with formality; we declaim — but it is professional; we diligently prepare for our pulpit — but our labored and polished production is designed but to exhibit our rhetorical attainments, taste, and originality, and to display our genius, ingenuity, and skill. If we kindle into ardor — it is forced; if a tear falls from our eye — our own impassioned oratory has excited it; if a beam of joy plays athwart our countenance — an admiring throng, hanging in breathless wonder on our lips, has lighted it; or if in the minds of the listening auditory emotion has been awakened and impression has been produced, with the breath which called it into being it has melted away, as beautiful, but as "transient and unsubstantial as a dream." And so we have our reward!
Oh, my brethren, who can adequately estimate the difficulty, I had almost said impossibility , in the midst of so vast, absorbing, and continuous an expenditure of thought and toil and sympathy for others — of making our own "calling and election sure"! With what tones of solemn import will the admonition fall upon the ear, in the still and lone hour of midnight study, or amid the excitement and exhaustion of daily labor, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling!" How shall we startle, as from a deep reverie, to the consciousness of the solemn truth, "You have a vineyard of your own to cultivate — a soul of your own to be lost or saved." And what, if at last it be found that we had broken the bread to others — and had starved our own souls; that we had conducted the people to the borders of the good land, yes, up to the very gates of Heaven — but had entered not in ourselves; that we had pressed the grapes of Eschol into their cup — while the spiritual wine had never moistened our own lips; that we had preached to others — and yet ourselves were cast away! Better, oh infinitely better, to have been a humble doorkeeper in the house of our God, serving Him with all humility of mind, sincerity of heart, and godly fear, living upon Christ and reflecting His image — than to have been the most popular idol of the day, to have worn a miter, and to have ministered in a cathedral — but destitute of an experimental, saving knowledge of Jesus, a stranger to His meek, lowly, cross-bearing spirit, and at last to stand in the judgment with our white robes of office deeply crimsoned with the blood of souls!
We are now conducted to a consideration of the order of personal holiness which the ministerial office demands. That the piety of the ministerial character differs, in its essential elements, from that which glows in the bosom and is reflected in the life of the private Christian, moving in a more retired and lowly sphere — is a supposition that will not for a moment be seriously entertained. On the same level, concerning the renewing of the Spirit, the justification of the soul, and the evidences of practical godliness — stands the profoundest theologian, with the weakest babe in Christ Jesus. There is a unity in the truth, as well as a unity in the Church that truth is designed to sanctify and save. And all who compose the true members of Christ's Church, are "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone." But that the piety of a minister of the Lord Jesus should be of a different order, that it should be cast into a stronger mold, and bear a character and impress more marked, decided, and elevated — who will doubt?