THE OUTER LIFE OF A PASTOR.
The Scriptures require in the pastor a model life. He is to be “an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Tim.iv. 12). As the leader of the flock his outward life will be expected to evince a higher moral tone and furnish a more marked exemplification of Christian principles than that of the private Christian, because his office constitutes him an example, and the prominence of his position renders defects in him especially conspicuous and hurtful. Hence, Scripture is here explicit and emphatic: “A bishop, then, must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach: not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity (for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?): not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must have a good report of them that are without, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil” (1 Tim. iii. 2–7).
I.Business Relations.
1.Make no debts:“Owe no man anything” (Rom. xiii. 8). In all purchases for personal and family purposes the pastor should pay as he buys. It cultivates a just economy and avoids debts, which often prove a heavy burden on a minister’s life and a most serious drawback to his usefulness. No man is thoroughly independent in the pulpit who is facing a number of unpaid creditors. Ordinarily, this avoidance of debt is entirely feasible, and when understood to be a rule with the pastor it has a beneficial influence in promoting promptness in the payment of his salary. The people will respect such a course in their minister. At the very outset of life, then, let him fix it as a principle never to run in debt. A strict adherence tothis will sometimes involve inconvenience and self-denial, but these are more than compensated in the exemption from the anxieties and humiliations of debt, in the sense of independence, in the respect and confidence of the community, and, above all, in the clear conscience which observance of this rule secures. Only the most absolute necessity should ever set aside this rule, for the neglect of this is too frequently a cause of failure in the pastoral office.
2.Use great care and all the proper forms in making business engagements.The pastor is tempted to neglect business forms on the supposition that as a minister he ought to rely on the honor and consideration of those with whom he deals, and as the result, even where there is no dishonesty, there is often misunderstanding, out of which grow heartburnings and disputes. All business transactions, therefore, should be conducted in a business way, leaving no room for misapprehensions, and then all engagements should be met with promptness and honor. A pastor should be delicately sensitive to his reputation in this, for any failure, though it be only an apparent one, in fulfilling a business obligation is sure to provoke unfavorable comment and militate against usefulness.
3.Live within your income.A pastor may not be reckless in regard to the probable future needs of himself and of those dependent on him. Such a course is justified neither by Scripture nor by Providence. “The Lord ordained that they who preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel” (1 Cor. ix. 14). A minister, therefore, should find a life-support in his income from his work, and should so use his salary that a part be laid aside for coming days of need. If the salary is small, he should rigidly cut down expenses that some of it may be reserved. Special exigencies in life, will, indeed, sometimes preventthis, but ordinarily it is feasible, and in the case of the head of a family it is plainly a most sacred duty. The neglect of care to make provision for those dependent on us is not faith, but recklessness.
Here, however, a pastor must beware of covetousness. Instances sometimes occur in which this just and necessary regard for future need degenerates into a selfish greed for accumulation which narrows and belittles the minister of Christ. He compromises his dignity and independence by seeking in various ways gifts from his people, and thus the man is sunk in the mendicant, or he degrades his office by descending to petty meannesses, driving close bargains in business and shirking his just share in the contributions for church-work and benevolence. Nowhere is the love of money more offensive than in the Christian minister.
II.Political Relations.
1. A pastor should always himself exercise the elective franchise and should encourage Christians to do so; in no other way can we have a Christian government. On this continent the great experiment is in progress of a government strictly by the people, and in the absence of religion and virtue it must prove a failure. Christian men should not neglect their duties as citizens; it imperils the life of the nation and the welfare of the Christian cause. The pulpit, therefore, should press on the church the duty of seeking the elevation of good men to official station. 2. As a pastor the minister is bound to refuse all party obligations and all partisan use of pastoral influence; for he is pastor of the whole church, chosen and supported without reference to political distinctions among the members. But as an individual he is entitled to his political preferences and his just politicalinfluence; with this the church has no right to interfere. At the same time, it is wise for the pastor to avoid excited political discussions, especially in public places, and quietly to exercise his political rights and perform the duties of a citizen. 3. When public questions have a strictly moral side, I think the pulpit should not be silent, but should seek, as on moral questions in general, to give direction to public sentiment in favor of honesty, truth, and virtue. Occasional sermons, therefore, presenting the obligations of citizens and applying the moral teachings of Christianity to questions on which Christian citizens are called to act, are the duty of the pastor; but the time and manner and spirit of such sermons require the exercise of the most careful judgment.
III.Social Character and Relations.
Two extremes are here to be avoided—the one, in which the pastor lives a recluse life, isolated from the life of the people and unfelt in directing the currents of thought and feeling around him; the other, in which he maintains a loose, familiar intercourse with all society, lounging about in public places, a “hail-fellow-well-met” with everybody. Avoiding these extremes, a pastor should never allow himself to be a cipher in social life but should make himself a vital force controlling and elevating it. The gravity of his character and work, however, requires him to use special care in regard to deportment and associations. He is, indeed, to be and to act out himself, but, while true to his own nature as a man, he is so to control it as never to forget his character and office as a minister of God. Here I offer the following suggestions:
1. The minister should be, always and everywhere, the unaffected Christian gentleman, showing all courtesy toall men. It is here some fail, and either through a neglect of the courtesies and amenities of social life render themselves repulsive, or by a stiff and artificial manner of observing them, without geniality and warmth, make themselves unapproachable. Men ordinarily and justly regard manners as an index of character. Good manners, therefore, cannot be put on from without; they spring from a sense of the relations we bear to others and a disposition to act in accordance with them. A kindly, unselfish heart, a quick, keen sympathy, a sensitive regard for others’ rights and feelings; a ready, generous appreciation for the excellences of others, and a tender charity for their faults and foibles—in short, a well-developed Christian manhood, with refined sensibilities, noble, pure, upright, transparent, touching life on every side, and fitted to bless whatever it touches,—this is the only real basis of correct manners. The cultivation of such a character, therefore, is the prime necessity, for in this will exist all the instincts of the true gentleman from which the gentlemanly manner spontaneously results.
2. In the matter of dress. I do not know that any law of propriety requires the minister to be distinguished either in the cut or the color of his garments. Many, however, prefer some kind of ministerial costume as a matter of convenience to indicate everywhere their vocation, and this is, of course, a subject to be left wholly to individual preference. The principle to be insisted on as important is that the dress be not such as to arrest special attention, as suggesting foppishness and fastidiousness on the one hand, or carelessness and slovenliness on the other. The man, not the dress, should arrest and hold attention.
3. In conversation he should be genial, courteous, affable, avoiding that tone and manner of condescension which carries in it an implied sense of superiority, andexhibiting that breadth of intelligence and culture which will secure respect for his views in general society. Slang phrases, vulgar anecdotes, boisterous discussions, idle gossip, and scandal, it is hardly necessary to say, ill become a pastor, and will in the end seriously militate against his usefulness. Coarseness, indelicacy, and all that is suggestive of impurity should be scrupulously avoided; such words, when uttered by a minister, live and fester in the memory, and are destructive of all pastoral influence afterward over those who hear them. “An obscene story, a lewd doubleentendre,a filthy joke, a questionable word or gesture, a sentence that would make a pure woman blush in public or in private, in select or in mixed company, is a burning shame and scandal to any minister of the Gospel.” Nor should his chief distinction in society be that of the wit or mimic. Wit and humor, when natural, are often elements of real power, as giving sparkle and flavor to speech, but in the pastor their place is subordinate; when they appear as his chief characteristic, they inevitably injure his influence. Attractive social qualities, such as enable the pastor to exercise a leading and governing power in society, are to be most earnestly sought; their effect on pastoral usefulness can hardly be overstated.
The minister, when a guest, enjoying the temporary hospitality of a family circle, should bring into it the blessing of a genial, sunshiny spirit, showing always a thorough appreciation of kindness received and avoiding all unnecessary trouble to the hosts. If other ministers are present, beware of that ministerial clannishness which centers conversation on topics adapted only to ministers or makes it consist of ministerial criticism, gossip, and scandal adapted to lower the estimation in which other ministers are held. In the freedom andabandonof ministerialsociety there is often much temptation to this, but words thus thoughtlessly spoken sometimes do incalculable injury, both by lowering the ministerial character in the eyes of the household, and by inflicting an incurable wound on the reputation of those made the subjects of gossip. The injunction of Scripture cannot be too carefully heeded: “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt” (Col. iv. 6); for thus the spirit you breathed and the words you spake will remain a benediction with that household and make your memory fragrant there for ever.
4. In his amusements and recreations a pastor should indulge only in such as are not only in themselves innocent but are not commonly offensive to the Christian conscience. The grand principle of self-denial enunciated by Paul as the rule of his own life is here, undoubtedly, the guiding principle of ministerial duty. He says: “Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God: even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved” (1 Cor. x. 32, 33). He relinquished self-gratification, even though innocent, rather than put a cause of stumbling before others and hinder their salvation. Recreation is doubtless a necessity—the bow always bent loses its spring—but recreation should never be taken in a form which may give offence to Christian souls, or which may set an example such as, if followed by others, might work their injury. A pastor’s influence also may be impaired by undue absorption in any form of recreation. There is no wrong, it may be, in using a good horse, in playing a game of ball or croquet, in fishing or hunting, or many other forms of recreation; but the pastor who is specially distinguished for his interest in fast horses or for his sporting habits, or as a devotee of amusements,violates most seriously the proprieties of his position, and sinks in the estimation of all thoughtful people.
5. A minister’s associations or special intimacies should not be with bad or loose or irreligious men; the taint will necessarily tarnish and injure his own reputation, even if it does not corrupt his character. He is to be “a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate” (Tit. i. 8). He should show all courtesy and kindness, indeed, to even the worst men around him, but his special friendships should not be sought there, nor his habitual associations. Some ministers have here made wreck of their influence with the better classes in the community, while their association with the loose and irreligious class, so far from winning them to Christ, has only the more hardened them in rejecting Him by lowering in their eyes the character of His servant.
6. The pastor’s relations with the other sex should not only always be pure in fact but should also be such as to avoid even the possibility of misconstruction. No point needs to be more carefully guarded, for even the suspicion or thought of wrong in this, however ill-grounded, is commonly fatal to usefulness, and often follows him through the remainder of life.
IV.Personal Habits.
The pastor is expected to be a model Christian gentleman, showing the refinement, delicacy, and culture which the Gospel inculcates and produces, and improper habits, therefore, in him are more prominent and influential for evil than in other men. Now and then a minister exhibits a foolishbravadoof public opinion by affecting brusque, uncouth, eccentric manners and indulging in questionable habits under the mistaken supposition that, in thus setting at defiance the common sentiments of mankind in regard to the proprieties of ministerial life,he is showing moral courage and manhood; nor are there wanting equally foolish people who will applaud this contemptible exhibition of personal vanity. But, apart from such exceptional cases, the ministerial life is always beset by strong temptations to unbecoming habits. Thus:
1.Intemperance in eating.The studious life, as ordinarily pursued, often tends to dyspepsia and an unnatural craving for food. The bodily and mental vigor is often thus destroyed, while the obvious absence of self-restraint degrades the man in the eyes of others. The dullness of the pulpit and the ill-health of ministers are not seldom traceable to an overloaded stomach.
2.The use of tobacco.The highest medical authorities now agree that this is one of the common causes of nervous prostration and early mental decay. The late Prof. Moses Stuart says: “I do not place the use of tobacco in the same scale with that of ardent spirits. It does not make men maniacs or demons. But that it does undermine the health of thousands; that it creates a nervous irritability, and thus operates on the temper and moral character of men; that it often creates a thirst for spirituous liquors; that it allures to clubs and grog-shops and taverns, and thus helps to make idlers and spendthrifts; and finally, that it is a very serious and needless expense,—are things which cannot be denied by any observing and considerate person. And if all this be true, how can the habitual use of tobacco as a mere luxury be defended by any one who wishes well to his fellow-men or has a proper regard to his own usefulness?” The duty of self-conquest in regard to such a habit is evident especially in the minister, whose very office adds emphasis to his personal example; and the principle involved is strongly set forth by Paul when he says: “All things are lawful for me, butI will not be brought under the power of any” (1 Cor. vi. 12).He accounted it an unworthy and dangerous thing for a Christian to come under bondage to any bodily appetite. But he adds: “Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things: now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we, an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away” (1 Cor. ix. 25–27).
3.The use of stimulants.The pressure of intellectual work on the pastor often requires of him the most important public efforts when worn and depressed, and thus at times the temptation to stimulate is very strong. The fact of bodily weakness pleads for a stimulant as a medical necessity. Once indulged, stimulation readily passes into a habit, and the importance of the occasion is made an effectual plea for it as an alternative to failure. Now, in all such cases, the consciousness of self-indulgence, as it weakens self-respect, must needs also weaken the moral power of the minister. He feels himself enslaved and cannot speak with authority. While consciously and deliberately yielding to self-indulgence, how can he preach to others the moral teachings of the Gospel? Such an indulgence, moreover, places the man in fearful peril, for it creates the necessity of repetition, and forms an appetite which in many instances has destroyed the man. Some of the most brilliant men in the ministry have here made an utter and terrible wreck of life.
Right habits are, therefore, of primary moment. A man can respect himself and secure the respect of others only as he exercises habitual self-control, holding passion and appetite in thorough subjection; without this the pastor lacks that consciousness of independence and that true manhood in which alone resides genuine moral power;and his defects, made conspicuous and influential by his sacred office, may be disastrous in their influence on those around him.
THE PASTOR’S INNER LIFE.
Ancient asceticism, in demanding for the ministry a hidden life of communion with God, gave voice not only to one of the profoundest intuitions of the Christian consciousness, but also to one of the clearest teachings of Scripture. The men who deal with spiritual things must themselves be spiritual. Our age, while rightly rejecting a perverted asceticism, is tending to the opposite error. It is intensely practical. “Action!” is its watchword. This practicalness often becomes mere narrowness and shallowness. It overlooks the profounder laws of the Christian life. Spiritual force comes from within, from the hidden life of God in the soul. It depends, not on mere outward activities, but on the Divine energies acting through the human faculties, God working through the man, the Holy Ghost permeating, quickening all the powers of the preacher, and speaking by his voice to the souls of the people. The soul’s secret power with God thus gives public power with men, and the mightiest influences of the pulpit often flow from a hidden spring in the solitude of the closet; for a sermon is not the mere utterance of man: there is in it a power more than human. Its vital force comes from the Holy Spirit. Jesus said: “It is notyethat speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you” (Matt. x. 20). Its spiritual energy springs from something deeper than logic and rhetoric. As Bushnell has well said: “Preaching is nothing else than the burstingout of life which has first burst in or up from where God is among the soul’s foundations.”
Such was the teaching of Christ. In His farewell words to His disciples He promised “another Comforter”—one who should take His place among them and abide with them for ever. As He had walked with them an Instructor, Friend, Helper, so after His departure the Holy Spirit should dwell among them, teaching, inspiring, guiding them, a true and living Divine Presence ever with them and mighty to help. Blessed as His own bodily presence had been, the presence of the Holy Spirit was of still higher moment, for He declared that it was better for them that He Himself depart and the Spirit come; for the Spirit, whose office it is to take of Christ and show Him, should reveal the Christ-presence within them in accordance with His promise: “He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, andwill manifest Myself to him” (John xiv. 21); “I will not leave you comfortless;I will come to you” (John xiv. 18). Without this Divine Helper He expressly forbade their entrance on the ministry, and as His last charge before He ascended He said, “Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high” (Luke xxiv. 49).
At the Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended, and how marvelous was His power! Plain as had been the words Jesus spake, the apostles yet utterly misconceived the most vital truths; but when the Spirit of truth came, the Gospel, in its grandeur and power, stood clearly revealed before them. The men who before had timidly cowered in the presence of danger now rejoiced that they “were counted worthy to suffer shame” for the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts v. 41). They whose selfish ambition had aspired to be “greatest in the kingdom of heaven” now forgot their mean rivalries, and were inspired with single-heartedconsecration to the Master; and the multitudes who before had despised and rejected their words, now convicted “of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment,” bowed before this unseen, mighty Power, and cried out, “Men and brethren, what must we do?” (Acts ii. 37).
Now, it is plain that the Holy Spirit, this special “power from on high,” was promised, not to the Apostles only, but to the ministry in all ages. In the New Testament period He dwelt, a living, quickening Divine presence, in all the servants of Christ, revealing truth, inspiring faith, and making their words the power of God unto salvation. They prayed in the Spirit; they spake in the Spirit; they lived in the Spirit. The promise of Jesus was fulfilled: “Lo! I am with you alway” (Matt. xxviii. 20); for the Christ-presence was continually revealed in them—a revelation of Him, not, indeed, to the eye, but to the soul, and unspeakably more blessed than had been His bodily presence when on earth. Not the Apostle only, but every servant of God, could say: “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. ii. 20); and in the hour of peril, when all men forsook him, the Christian confessor triumphantly affirmed: “Notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me” (2 Tim. iv. 17). In every subsequent age the indwelling Spirit of God has been the fountain of power in the ministry; and the mightiest men in the pulpit, renouncing self-sufficiency, have confessed, with Paul: “Our sufficiency is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament” (2 Cor. iii. 5, 6). Conscious of need, they have turned their souls upward to God, and this Divine Helper has entered and filled them; and all the faculties and culture of the man, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, have been transfused, elevated, enlarged, by this invisible but mighty Power. It has been truly said: “The virtue of an electric wire is not in the wire, but inits connection with the voltaic battery. The power of the minister is not in the polish of his style, the pictorialness of his illustrations, the fervor of his manner, the order and arrangement of his discourse, but in his living connection with God and his capacity to act as a connecting-link between God and the human soul. It is God in the soul which is the secret of true pulpit power.”
How, then, shall the pastor maintain an inner life such that he shall be “endued with power from on high” and God shall speak through him to the souls of men? In answer this I suggest as a means of chief importance:
I.The Habitual Practice of Secret Prayer.—For prayer is the bond which links the Divine power with the human. It is the channel through which God pours His life into the soul. It is the uplifted hand of man’s weakness taking hold on God’s strength. It calls down from heaven the sacred fire, which alone may kindle the preacher’s sacrifice. It has the most vital relations to the character and work of a pastor.
1.The relation of secret prayer to the spirit and purpose of the ministry.
Special dangers beset the pastor. The most sacred services, from their frequent recurrence, may come to be performed in a perfunctory spirit, and his life may thus degenerate into mere professionalism. Unconsciously he comes to meditate, read, and even pray with a view only to others and its effect on others. The sense of his personal relation to God is lost. As a public speaker a desire for popularity may unduly influence his preaching, and conspicuous position tempt his ambition, obscuring his vision of the great end of his ministry—the honor of Christ and the salvation of souls. The very respect which his office secures may foster spiritual pride and make him insensible to his defection in heart from God. Few menare environed by such subtle and powerful seductions to a false life as a Christian minister, and against these only a vivid consciousness of his high calling is an adequate safeguard. He is God’s ambassador, receiving his commission and his message, not from men, but from the Sovereign of heaven and earth. The souls of his congregation are entrusted to him, and the words he is charged to speak are the words of God’s saving power. “In them that are saved” he is “a savor of life unto life,” but “in them that perish” “a savor of death unto death” (2 Cor. ii. 15, 16). If faithful to his trust, he “shall shine as the brightness of the firmament” and “as the stars for ever and ever” (Dan. xii. 3); if unfaithful, the blood of souls will be found on him in the day of God’s inquisition. Now, only a distinct realization of these responsibilities as an ever-present, living force pervading his spirit will hold the minister in his inmost life true to Christ and to his work.
It is here prayer has its mightiest reflex power. It gives a vital sense of God and of spiritual realities. It lifts the life above the control of lower motives to a loftier moral elevation, with a purer atmosphere and a broader horizon. The whole man is elevated, ennobled, transfused with Divine life, as he holds communion with God. When Moses had been with God in the mount, his face shone with a glory such that Israel could not steadfastly look on it. It was when Jesus was praying that he was transfigured, “and His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light” (Matt. xvii. 2). God imprints His own image on the soul that comes face to face with Him.
The inner life of a preacher always stands revealed in the pulpit; it transfuses itself through his preaching. No mere declamation, no arts of rhetoric, no dramatic simulation of emotion, can conceal the absence of spiritual life. Moral earnestness can never be assumed; it is the attributeonly of a soul profoundly feeling the power and reality of Divine truth. The man, therefore, who would speak God’s Word with the pungency and fervor of a Bunyan, a Baxter, a Flavel, or a Payson must, like them, be constant and fervent in prayer. The springs of spiritual life opened in the closet will pour forth never-failing streams of life in the pulpit. Luther said: “Prayer, meditation, and temptation make a minister.” He himself is said to have spent three hours daily in prayer, and those mighty words which thrilled the heart of Christendom were the utterances of a soul thus glowing with the flames of devotion.
2.The relation of secret prayer to the apprehension of spiritual truth.
Spiritual truth is revealed only to the spiritual mind: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; . . . neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. ii. 14). Spiritual susceptibility is the essential condition of apprehending spiritual truth. A soul instinct with Divine life, sensitive to Divine impressions, in sympathy with Divine things—this, and this only, can enter in to a realization of those great truths which constitute the Gospel. Without this the very message the pastor is charged to preach he himself will fail to apprehend. He may, indeed, see the Christian doctrines through the eye of an impassive logic, but such a lifeless intellectualism, even when abstractly correct, has no power. The theology of the pulpit is a theology vitalized by prayer and glowing in the heart as a great, living reality. The hearts of men are most surely moved by living truths vividly realized in the speaker’s soul. The love of God in the incarnation and death of His Son, the guilt and danger of the souls of men, the glories of the saved and the miseries of the lost,—these are not matters of cold intellection. To him who lives in the atmosphere ofprayer they stand out as vivid realities. Such men, like Paul, “believe, and therefore speak;” and in words of burning fervor they utter these great truths and press them on the souls of men. Payson, on his death-bed, said: “Prayer is the first thing, the second thing, the third thing, necessary for a minister.” Whitefield spent hours of each day on his knees with God’s Word open before him, and it was from the audience-chamber of heaven he went forth to speak those marvelous words of power which stirred the souls of the multitude. These eternal truths thus passed in him beyond mere intellections; they took possession of the whole man, and he could but speak with tender pathos and holy boldness, as he saw light in God’s light, and the spiritual world was thus all ablaze with light around him.
Jesus Himself, the Chief Pastor, lived a life of ceaseless prayer. Pressed under the burden of souls, he waked while others slept. Sometimes He spent the whole night in prayer; at others, “rising up a great while before day,” He sought communion with the Father.
“Cold mountains and the midnight airWitnessed the fervor of His prayer.”
And if He, the Sinless One, the God-man, must needs thus pray, if prayer was essential even to His inner life and to His power in the work assigned Him, how much great necessity must press on His weak, sinful servants! If communion with God filled so large a place in the life of the Chief Pastor, it surely should not have less place in the life of the under-shepherds.
II.The Habitual Self-Application and Self-Appropriation of Divine Truth.—The habit of viewing truth objectively in its relation to other truths or to other souls, rather than subjectively in its relationto one’s own soul, is one of the greatest dangers of the minister, because his work tends directly to keep uppermost in his thinking the needs of others. He may thus come to conceive vividly and to present strongly the most affecting and stupendous truths of the Gospel without the least thought of their relation to himself and their bearing on his own life and destiny. Nor is he in this necessarily insincere. He has an actual and strong conception of the truth and of its pregnancy with weal or woe to others, and in pressing it he is true to his present conviction; but his conception of it is purely in its relation to others, and secures no application to his own spiritual wants. Now, God’s only way, so far as we know, of saving and sanctifying an intelligent soul is through the truth; and this not truth conceived in the intellect as a mere object of thought, but truth conceived in the heart, entering into the center of a man’s being, and acting as a life-force in his deepest moral convictions and affections. “Born again by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. i. 23), “Sanctify them through Thy truth, Thy Word is truth” (John xvii. 17), are passages which indicate an unvarying law of the Gospel. All spiritual life comes from the Holy Spirit, acting through Divine truth received into the soul. To this law God has not made the minister an exception. The measure of religious life in him, as in every man, is determined by the extent of this believing appropriation of Divine truth and its consequent living power in him. He may be, therefore, a learned theologian, holding in his intellectual vision a wide range of truth, while yet, from failure in heart appropriation of it, he is a dwarf in vital spiritual development, because Christian life grows not from mere knowledge, but from truth believingly appropriated.
The pastor, therefore, should cultivate the habit of applyingand appropriating to his own soul the truths he preaches. He should habitually look at them in their relation to himself and take them into his own life by a distinct act of faith, which believingly, joyfully, appropriates them as belonging to him. Every truth thus received will become in him an added element of life, deepening and enlarging his religious consciousness and imparting a richer and more blessed experience. Then, from this fountain of life within, thus ever enlarged and enriched, he will present in the pulpit, not a dead system of doctrines, but a living Gospel which shall come with fulness of life to the people.
III.An Habitual Self-Surrender and Consecration to Christ and His Work.—Selfishness, in its more insidious forms, endangers the life of a pastor. Outwardly, by office, he is consecrated to the service of Christ, and for this very reason he is less likely to detect, deep down at the springs of his living, the presence and power of a self-love, in the form of pride, envy, self-will, self-indulgence, and ambition, which may be, after all, the controlling force in his inner life. The danger is here the greater because, its growth having been unperceived, the man is unconscious of its control, and because, with all “the deceitfulness of sin,” it lurks stealthily, but all the more potentially, within the sacred forms and associations of a consecrated office. Hence the necessity of frequent and rigid self-examination. A man must interrogate himself, and with careful introspection seek to detect the real forces that control his life. There should be pauses in his career when he will stand alone in the presence-chamber of the Omniscient One, and cry, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. cxxxix. 23, 24). The best lives have found great value in suchspecial seasons privately set apart for fasting, prayer, and self-examination, as the navigator, in the perils of his voyage, stops to take observation of the sun and stars and make certain what is his position and whither the winds and currents are bearing him. Then, with vision thus clarified, and in full view of his real position, he should make a distinct renewal of self-dedication to God, giving up himself, with all he is and has, unreservedly to Him.
Without this self-renunciation and self-devotion to Christ, as an habitual fact, the inner life will be without spiritual power. Jesus, in His promise of the Holy Spirit and of the Christ-presence, makes this the one, essential condition: “If ye love Me, keep My commandments, and I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter” (John xiv. 15, 16). A true consecration of self to Christ, therefore, assures the presence of the Holy Spirit as the revealer of Christ within the soul. This was the habitual attitude of the apostle Paul. He says: “The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. ii. 20). Self was nothing, Christ everything; for when confronted with peril of death, he said: “None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God” (Acts xx. 24). Thus self-dedicated, he received the promise: The Spirit wrought in him mightily, filling him with Divine life and power. So utter was his self-abnegation, and so all-absorbing his love of souls, that, like Moses of old (Ex. xxxii. 32), he “could wish,” were it right and would it secure their salvation, to be himself “accursed from Christ” for them (Rom. ix. 3). With like self-devotion to souls, Rutherford, the eminent Scotch minister, while assuring his flock that they “were theobjects of his tears, care, fear, and daily prayers,” said “My witness is above, that your heaven would be two heavens to me, and the salvation of you all as two salvations to me.” A ministry thus self-forgetting is of necessity a ministry of power; for God Himself works in it, as all history has shown.
IV.An Habitual looking Above for the Reward.—“Godliness” has “promise of the life that now is” (1 Tim. iv. 8); and nowhere, perhaps, is that promise more fully realized than in the pastorate in the present age. In social relations, in opportunities for culture, in friendships formed, in means of influence, in popular estimation, and even in temporal support, few positions in life have higher advantages or more agreeable surroundings. But, with all this, life, even in a faithful ministry, is, on its earthly side, rarely other than a disappointment; and the pastor who seeks reward in human applause or in any form of earthly hope, not only thereby excludes the Holy Spirit from his life but is also sure to find unrest and failure as the ultimate result. The rewards of the faithful pastor are from God and are of special magnitude and blessedness.
The rewards come, in part, in the present life. A faithful minister finds them alike in a clear conscience and a sense of the approval of God, and in his work itself and the blessed results following it. With all its care and toil, the ministry, to the man who knows his call of God to the work and devotes himself to it without reserve, is the happiest work on earth. “Sorrowful” he is, “yet always rejoicing.” Henry Martyn said: “I do not wish for any heaven on earth besides that of preaching the precious Gospel of Jesus Christ to immortal souls. I wish for no service but the service of God in laboring for souls on earth and to do His will in heaven.” Dr.Doddridge: “I esteem the ministry the most desirable employment on earth, and find that delight in it, and those advantages from it, which I think hardly any other employment on earth could give me.” Rutherford: “There is nothing out of heaven, next to Christ, dearer to me than my ministry.” Brown: “Now, after forty years’ preaching of Christ, I think I would rather beg my bread all the laboring-days of the week for an opportunity of publishing the Gospel on the Lord’s Day than without such privilege to enjoy the richest possessions on earth.” Such is the testimony of godly ministers in all ages, even in periods of bitter persecution. The conscious presence of Christ; the blessed privilege of declaring to guilty men God’s rich and free mercy; the delight in the work of saving souls and of ministering comfort and strength and hope to the sorrowing, the weak, and the despairing; the joy of communion with saints,—all these enter into the minister’s experience, and give to his work even on earth an unspeakably rich reward.
But the highest reward of the ministry is reserved in heaven. There they will “shine as the brightness of the firmament” “and as the stars for ever and ever” (Dan. xii. 3). “He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal” (John iv. 36). Every soul won to Christ here will there be an occasion of eternal joy. Paul said: “What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not evenyein the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming?” (1 Thess. ii. 19). Glorious beyond our thought is the reward set before every faithful Christian: he shall receive a “crown of righteousness” (2 Tim. iv. 8), a “crown of life” (James i. 12), “an eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. iv. 17) and shall “shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of God” (Matt. xiii. 43); and allthis intensified shall be the reward of the true pastor, according as he is faithful to his high calling from God.
Let the pastor, then, seek most of all to be faithful to Christ and His work. Let it be to him “a very small thing” that he “be judged” “of man’s judgment” (1 Cor. iv. 4) and let him ever cherish as of chief moment a clear conscience, finding his highest comfort in the sweet assurance of God’s approval. Be it his to have “respect unto the recompense of the reward,” and so endure “as seeing him who is invisible” (Heb. xi. 26, 27). Thus, will his life approximate that grandest of merely human lives—the life of him who declared, “As we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the Gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God which trieth our hearts” (1 Thess. ii. 4), and at the close of which it was said, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day” (2 Tim. iv. 7, 8).
When of old, at the Sea of Galilee, the Lord reinstated Peter after his fall, He thrice with solemn emphasis proposed the question, “Simon, son of Jonas,lovestthoume?” He thus taught for all the ages that personal love to Him is the primal condition for the sacred office. Without this as the central, fontal principle in the soul the pastor’s life will fail of spiritual power, but with this as its impulsive force he will be like the faithful minister seen by Bunyan’s pilgrim: he “had eyes lifted up to heaven, the best of books in his hand, the law of truth was written upon his lips, the world was behind his back; he stood as if he pleaded with men, and a crown of gold did hang over his head.”
Transcriber’s Notes.Note about paragraph identification: The first new paragraph on a page is “paragraph one.” If a paragraph continues from the prior page, it is “paragraph zero.”Page 5, preface, second paragraph, apply Reverential Capitalization (RC) to “Gospel.”Page 7, TOC, Section i., apply RC to “Divine.”The break between pages 7 and 8 is in a unit that style indicates should not be broken: “5.|Preaching.” The whole unit was moved to the earlier page.Page 8, TOC, section iii., point 5 (2.), change the semi-colon after “Exposition” to a colon.Page 11, TOC, Section xx., point 2, apply RC to “Divine”; point 3, apply RC to “His.”Page 13, Section i., paragraph one, apply RC to “He,” “His” (twice), “Divine,” “My” (twice), and “Apostles.”Page 14, paragraph zero, point 2, apply RC to “He,” “Apostles,” “Himself,” and “His.” Point 3, apply RC to “Divine,” “His,” and “Gospel.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine” and “Gospel.”The break between pages 14 and 15 is in the word “consciousness”: con|sciousness. In this and all subsequent cases the whole word was moved to the earlier page.Page 15, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Divine.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine” and “Word.”The break between pages 15 and 16 is in the word “enthusiasm”: en|thusiasm.Page 16, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel.” Point 2, apply RC to “Gospel”; change “wo” to “woe”; apply RC to “Gospel”; point 3, apply RC to “Divine” (twice).Page 17, point II, apply RC to “Gospel.” Point II 1, apply RC to “Christ.”Page 18, paragraph zero, point 5, apply RC to “Word” and “Gospel.”Page 19, paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine.” Point III, apply RC to “Him.”Page 20, paragraph zero, add comma to “prayer the.” Paragraph one, point 1, apply RC to “His.” Point 2, apply RC to “Divine.” Point 3, apply RC to “Divine” and “Word.”Page 21, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel.” Section ii., part I, paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine” and “His” (twice). Point I 1, apply RC to “Gospel.”The break between pages 21 and 22 is in the word “evidently”: evi|dently.Page 22, point 2, change “centre” to “center”; apply RC to “Apostles.”Page 23, in-line note on “niggardly.”Page 24, paragraph zero, change “practising” to “practicing.” Point 5, remove comma from “weeks, and.” Point 6, change “practises” to “practices.”Page 25, point II 1, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 27, paragraph zero, add comma to “order for.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “His.”The break between pages 27 and 28 is in the word “service”: ser|vice.Page 28, point 2, add comma to “activity a.”Page 29, point 3, add comma to “failed and.”Page 30, paragraph one, remove comma from “place, and.”Page 32, point 1, remove comma from “choir, and.”Page 33, point III, apply RC to “Word” and “Him.” Point III 1 (1.), add comma to “Thus a.”Page 34, paragraph zero, point (4.), apply RC to “Word.”Page 35, paragraph zero, remove comma from “Scripture, and.” Point (3.), add comma to “instances false.”Page 36, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Word.”The break between pages 37 and 38 is in the word “expression”: expres|sion.Page 37, paragraph one, change “exigences” to “exigencies.”Page 38, paragraph one, point (1.), apply RC to “Divine.”Page 39, paragraph zero, point (3.), add comma to “case there.”Page 40, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Divine,” “His,” “Gospel,” and “Divine” (twice).Page 41, paragraph one, point 4 (2), apply RC to “Divine.”Page 42, paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine.”Page 43, paragraph zero, change “moulded” to “molded.” Point V, change “centre” to “center”; apply RC to “Himself,” “He,” “Him” (thrice), “Gospel,” and “Word.”Page 44, paragraph one, apply RC to “Gospel” Point 1, apply RC to “Divine,” “Word,” “Divine,” and “Word.” Point 2, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 45, paragraph zero, remove comma from “life, and.” Paragraph two, point 1, apply RC to “Him,” “His,” “Divinity,” and “His” (twice).Page 46, paragraph zero, apply RC to “He,” “His” (twice), “He,” “Him,” “He,” “His” (thrice), “He,” “Him,” “He,” “His,” “Gospel,” “His,” “He,” “His,” “Himself,” and “His.” Capitalize “Fall.” Apply RC to “His” (twice). Change “centre” to “center.” Apply RC to “Him” and “Gospel.”The break between pages 46 and 47 is in the word “possible”: possi|ble.Page 47, paragraph zero, point (2.), change “defence” to “defense” and “imperilled” to “imperiled.”Page 48, paragaph zero, apply RC to “Divine”; change “skilful” to “skillful.” Point (2.), change “mould” to “mold.”Page 49, paragraph zero, add comma to “also in.” Point (3.), apply RC to “Word.”Page 50, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel” (twice). Point (2.), apply RC to “Him” and “His.”The break between pages 50 and 51 is in the word “adoring”: ador|ing.Page 51, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Him” (twice). Point (3.), remove comma from “courage, and.” Apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph one, add comma to “subjects I.” Point (2.), apply RC to “Divine,” “Him,” and “Divine.”The break between pages 52 and 53 is in the word “discriminating”: dis|criminating.Page 53, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Divine” and “Gospel.” Paragraph one, capitalize “Sermon on the Mount.”Page 54, point (4.), apply RC to “Divine”; remove comma from “theme, and.”Page 55, paragraph zero, point 5, apply RC to “Word”; remove comma from “effort, and.”Page 61, paragraph zero, remove comma from “alone, and”; apply RC to “Him.”Page 63, paragaph zero, point 3, apply RC to “Him.”The break between pages 63 and 64 is in the word “perhaps”: per|haps.Page 64, paragraph zero, change “exigences” to “exigencies.”Page 65, paragraph two, point 2, apply RC to “Gospel” and “Word.”Page 66, paragraph zero, add comma to “purpose have.”The break between pages 66 and 67 is in the word “stubble”: stub|ble.Page 67, paragraph one, remove comma from “bear, and.”Page 68, paragraph zero, point 3, change “centre” to “center.”Page 70, paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine” and “His.”Page 72, paragraph zero, point 3, apply RC to “Divine.” Paragraph one, change “centre” to “center”; apply RC to “Him.”Page 73, paragraph zero, capitalize “Passover.” Remove comma from “administration, but.”Page 74, paragraph one, remove commas from “school, and, believing.”The break between pages 74 and 75 is in the word “well-filled”: well-|filled.Page 75, paragraph zero, remove comma from “schools, and.” Paragraph one, point 2, remove comma from “women, and.”Page 77, paragraph zero, remove commas from “trashy, but” and “directly, and.”Page 78, section vii., paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine,” “His” (twice), “He,” “His,” “He,” “Him,” and “His.”Page 80, paragraph zero, remove comma from “one, and.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “Him” and “His.”Page 81, point I, paragraph two, apply RC to “Gospel”; change “exigences” to “exigencies.”Page 83, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel” (twice).Page 84, paragraph two, add comma to “reason it.”Page 85, paragraph zero, add comma to “turn they.” Paragraph one, add comma to “rule a.”Page 86, paragraph zero, add comma to “accessible and.” Point III, paragraph one, apply RC to “Word”; remove comma from “God, and.”Page 87, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Him.” Paragraph one, capitalize “Divine,” referring to a churchman. Paragraph two, add comma to “conversations new.”Page 89, paragraph two, add comma to “week he”; remove comma from “burnings, but.”Page 91, paragraph zero, apply RC to “His” (twice).The break between pages 91 and 92 is in the word “circumstances”: circum|stances.Page 92, paragraph one, point 3, remove comma from “friend, and.”Page 93, paragraph zero, add comma to “possible help”; apply RC to “He,” “Him,” “His,” and “Him”; change “Saviour” to “Savior.”The break between pages 93 and 94 is in the word “everything”: every|thing.Page 94, paragraph one, apply RC to “Gospel.” Section viii., paragraph one, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 95, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Divine” (twice), and “Gospel”; remove comma from “men, and.”The break between pages 96 and 97 is in the word “religious”: re|ligious.Page 96, paragraph one, apply RC to “Him,” “My,” and “His.” Paragraph two, point 2, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 97, paragraph one, remove comma from “it, and”; apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 98, paragraph one, change “scepticism” to “skepticism.”Page 101, paragraph two, point 2, change “centres” to “centers” (twice).Page 103, paragraph one, point 1, remove comma from “teaching, and”; add comma to “success the.”Page 105, paragraph one, point 3, remove commas from “appears, and” and “fact, and.” Paragraph two, point 4, remove comma from “watch, and.”The break between pages 105 and 106 is in the word “relinquishing”: relin|quishing.Page 106, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel.” Section xi., paragraph two, point 1, add comma to “then it.”Page 107, paragraph one, point 2, remove comma from “indulged, and”; change “offence” to “offense.”Page 108, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel” and “He”; remove comma from “accidental, but”; apply RC to “He” (twice) and “Gospel.”The break between pages 108 and 109 is in the word “acceptance”: accept|ance.Page 109, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Him” and “Gospel” (twice). Paragraph one, point 4, add comma to “standing and.”Page 110, paragraph one, point 5, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 111, paragraph one, apply RC to “Gospel.”The break between pages 111 and 112 is in the word “contribution”: contribu|tion.Page 112, paragraph two, point 3, remove comma for “this, or.”Page 115, paragraph zero, remove comma from “work, and.”Page 116, paragraph one, point 4, apply RC to “Word.”The break between pages 116 and 117 is in the word “eminently”: emi|nently.Page 117, paragraph two, point 2, change “defence” to “defense” (twice).The break between pages 117 and 118 is in the word “evangelical”: evangel|ical.Page 118, paragraph zero, change “exigences” to “exigencies”; apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph one, point 4, apply RC to “Gospel”; change “centres” to “centers”; apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 119, paragraph zero, point (2.), apply RC to “Gospel” and “Divine.” Point (3.), apply RC to “Word.”Page 120, paragraph one, remove comma from “country, and.”Page 122, paragraph zero, point 3, remove comma from “discipline, and.” Point 4, change “pretence” to “pretense.”Page 123, paragraph one, add comma to “Finally I.”Page 124, paragraph zero, remove comma from “necessity, and”; add comma to “certainly the.” Section XVI, apply RC to “His.”Page 125, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel” (twice).Page 126, paragraph zero, remove comma from “advisers, and.” Point 4, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 130, paragraph zero, remove comma from “him, and.” Paragraph one, point 1, change “dulness” to “dullness.”Page 133, paragraph zero, remove commas from “experience, and” and “pulpit, and.” Paragraph one, point 6, add comma to “it power.”Page 134, paragraph one, apply RC to “Apostles” (twice) and “Word”; add comma to “ministers we.”Page 135, paragraph zero, remove comma from “membership, and.”Page 136, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel”; add comma to “this he”; remove commas from “spirit, and” and “life, or”; change “he lose habits” to “he loses habits” and “fulness” to “fullness”; apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 137, paragraph one, apply RC to “Word.” Point 1, apply RC to “Gospel.” Point 2, apply RC to “Gospel” and “Divinely-constituted.”Page 138, paragraph zero, remove comma from “reason, and.” Section xvii., paragraph one, add comma to “respect they.”Page 139, paragraph one, remove comma from “study, and.”Page 141, paragraph zero, remove comma from “plan, and.”Page 142, paragraph one, remove comma from “mill, but.”The break between pages 142 and 143 is in the word “standpoints”: stand|points.Page 143, paragraph three, point 1, change “marvellously” to “marvelously”; apply RC to “Word.”Page 144, paragraph two, remove comma from “manhood, and.”Page 145, paragraph one, point 4, apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph three, apply RC to “Gospel”; and add comma to “Bible a.”The break between pages 145 and 146 is in the word “undiscriminating”: undiscriminat|ing.Page 146, paragraph one, point 1, apply RC to “Word,” “Divine,” “Word,” “His,” and “Divine.”Page 147, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 148, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Apostle,” “Gospel,” “He” and “His” (twice). Of Paul, point 2, apply RC to “Divinely-called” and “Apostle.” Of Paul, point 3, apply RC to “Apostle” and “Gospel.” Apply RC to “Gospel.” Of Christ, point 1, apply RC to “His” and “He.” Of Christ, point 2, apply RC to “His,” “Divine,” “He,” “His,” and “Word.”Page 149, paragraph zero, remove comma from “it, and”; apply RC to “Gospel”; remove commas from “text-book, and” and “thought, and.”The break between pages 149 and 150 is in the word “formation”: forma|tion.Page 150, paragraph two, apply RC to “His” and “Gospel.”Page 151, paragraph one, apply RC to “He” and “His.” Point 1, change “ch. iv. 9” to “Phil. iv. 9” for concreteness; change “unblamably” to “unblameably”; remove comma from “pulpit, and.”The break between pages 151 and 152 is in the word “proposes”: pro|poses.Page 152, paragraph zero, add comma to “evidently he.” Point 3, apply RC to “Gospel” and “He.” Point 4, apply RC to “Gospel”; change “doest” to “dost” to match KJV quotation. Paragraph one, apply RC to “His.”Page 153, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Divine” and “His.”Page 155, paragraph two, apply RC to “Gospel” (twice); change “exigences” to “exigencies.”Page 156, paragraph two, point 1, remove comma from “franchise, and.”Page 157, paragraph one, remove comma from “life, but.”Page 159, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph one, change “centres” to “centers.”The break between pages 159 and 160 is in the word “ministerial”: min|isterial.Page 160, paragraph zero, remove comma from “household, and.” Paragraph one, point 4, remove comma from “innocent, but.”The break between pages 160 and 161 is in the word “amusements”: amuse|ments.Page 161, paragraph one, point 5, apply RC to “Him” and “His.” Paragraph two, point 6, remove comma from “fact, but.” Paragraph three, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 162, paragraph one, point 1, change “dulness” to “dullness.”The break between pages 162 and 163 is within a unit (a scripture reference), “1 Cor. vi.|12.” The whole unit was moved to the earlier page.Page 163, paragraph one, point 3, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 164, section xx., paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine.”The break between pages 164 and 165 is in the word “bursting”: burst|ing.Page 165, paragraph one, apply RC to “His” (twice), “He,” “His,” “He,” “His,” “Divine,” “His,” “He” (twice), “Himself,” “Him,” “His,” “Me,” “My,” “Myself,” “Divine,” “He,” “His,” and “He” (twice). Paragraph two, change “marvellous” to “marvelous”; apply RC to “His” and “Gospel.”Page 166, paragraph one, apply RC to “Apostles,” “He,” “Divine,” “Him,” “His,” “Apostle,” and “Divine.”Page 167, paragraph two, point I, apply RC to “Divine” and “His.”Page 168, paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine,” “His” (thrice), and “Him.”Page 169, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Divine” and “Word.” Paragraph two, apply RC to “Divine” (thrice), “Gospel,” and “His.”Page 170, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Word”; change “marvellous” to “marvelous.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “Himself” and “He” (twice). Poem, apply RC to “His.” Paragraph two, apply RC to “He,” “His” (twice), “Him,” and “His.”Page 171, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel”; change “centre” to “center”; apply RC to “Word,” “Thy,” “Thy Word,” “Gospel” and “Divine” (twice).The break between pages 171 and 172 is in the word “applying”: ap|plying.Page 172, paragraph zero, remove comma from “himself, and”; apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph one, point III, apply RC to “His.”Page 173, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Him.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “His,” “Me,” “My,” “Himself,” and “Gospel”; add comma to “self-dedicated he”; capitalize “The” after the colon, because a whole sentence follows the colon; apply RC to “Divine.”Page 174, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Himself.” Paragraph one, point IV, remove commas from “life, but” and “God, and.” Paragraph two, apply RC to “Gospel” and “His.”Page 175, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “His”; remove comma after “2 Cor. iv. 17” reference.Page 176, paragraph one, apply RC to “His”; add right double quote after “small thing”; remove comma after “1 Cor. iv. 4” reference; add comma to “thus will”; apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph two, apply RC to “He” and “Him.”
Note about paragraph identification: The first new paragraph on a page is “paragraph one.” If a paragraph continues from the prior page, it is “paragraph zero.”Page 5, preface, second paragraph, apply Reverential Capitalization (RC) to “Gospel.”Page 7, TOC, Section i., apply RC to “Divine.”The break between pages 7 and 8 is in a unit that style indicates should not be broken: “5.|Preaching.” The whole unit was moved to the earlier page.Page 8, TOC, section iii., point 5 (2.), change the semi-colon after “Exposition” to a colon.Page 11, TOC, Section xx., point 2, apply RC to “Divine”; point 3, apply RC to “His.”Page 13, Section i., paragraph one, apply RC to “He,” “His” (twice), “Divine,” “My” (twice), and “Apostles.”Page 14, paragraph zero, point 2, apply RC to “He,” “Apostles,” “Himself,” and “His.” Point 3, apply RC to “Divine,” “His,” and “Gospel.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine” and “Gospel.”The break between pages 14 and 15 is in the word “consciousness”: con|sciousness. In this and all subsequent cases the whole word was moved to the earlier page.Page 15, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Divine.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine” and “Word.”The break between pages 15 and 16 is in the word “enthusiasm”: en|thusiasm.Page 16, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel.” Point 2, apply RC to “Gospel”; change “wo” to “woe”; apply RC to “Gospel”; point 3, apply RC to “Divine” (twice).Page 17, point II, apply RC to “Gospel.” Point II 1, apply RC to “Christ.”Page 18, paragraph zero, point 5, apply RC to “Word” and “Gospel.”Page 19, paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine.” Point III, apply RC to “Him.”Page 20, paragraph zero, add comma to “prayer the.” Paragraph one, point 1, apply RC to “His.” Point 2, apply RC to “Divine.” Point 3, apply RC to “Divine” and “Word.”Page 21, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel.” Section ii., part I, paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine” and “His” (twice). Point I 1, apply RC to “Gospel.”The break between pages 21 and 22 is in the word “evidently”: evi|dently.Page 22, point 2, change “centre” to “center”; apply RC to “Apostles.”Page 23, in-line note on “niggardly.”Page 24, paragraph zero, change “practising” to “practicing.” Point 5, remove comma from “weeks, and.” Point 6, change “practises” to “practices.”Page 25, point II 1, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 27, paragraph zero, add comma to “order for.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “His.”The break between pages 27 and 28 is in the word “service”: ser|vice.Page 28, point 2, add comma to “activity a.”Page 29, point 3, add comma to “failed and.”Page 30, paragraph one, remove comma from “place, and.”Page 32, point 1, remove comma from “choir, and.”Page 33, point III, apply RC to “Word” and “Him.” Point III 1 (1.), add comma to “Thus a.”Page 34, paragraph zero, point (4.), apply RC to “Word.”Page 35, paragraph zero, remove comma from “Scripture, and.” Point (3.), add comma to “instances false.”Page 36, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Word.”The break between pages 37 and 38 is in the word “expression”: expres|sion.Page 37, paragraph one, change “exigences” to “exigencies.”Page 38, paragraph one, point (1.), apply RC to “Divine.”Page 39, paragraph zero, point (3.), add comma to “case there.”Page 40, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Divine,” “His,” “Gospel,” and “Divine” (twice).Page 41, paragraph one, point 4 (2), apply RC to “Divine.”Page 42, paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine.”Page 43, paragraph zero, change “moulded” to “molded.” Point V, change “centre” to “center”; apply RC to “Himself,” “He,” “Him” (thrice), “Gospel,” and “Word.”Page 44, paragraph one, apply RC to “Gospel” Point 1, apply RC to “Divine,” “Word,” “Divine,” and “Word.” Point 2, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 45, paragraph zero, remove comma from “life, and.” Paragraph two, point 1, apply RC to “Him,” “His,” “Divinity,” and “His” (twice).Page 46, paragraph zero, apply RC to “He,” “His” (twice), “He,” “Him,” “He,” “His” (thrice), “He,” “Him,” “He,” “His,” “Gospel,” “His,” “He,” “His,” “Himself,” and “His.” Capitalize “Fall.” Apply RC to “His” (twice). Change “centre” to “center.” Apply RC to “Him” and “Gospel.”The break between pages 46 and 47 is in the word “possible”: possi|ble.Page 47, paragraph zero, point (2.), change “defence” to “defense” and “imperilled” to “imperiled.”Page 48, paragaph zero, apply RC to “Divine”; change “skilful” to “skillful.” Point (2.), change “mould” to “mold.”Page 49, paragraph zero, add comma to “also in.” Point (3.), apply RC to “Word.”Page 50, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel” (twice). Point (2.), apply RC to “Him” and “His.”The break between pages 50 and 51 is in the word “adoring”: ador|ing.Page 51, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Him” (twice). Point (3.), remove comma from “courage, and.” Apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph one, add comma to “subjects I.” Point (2.), apply RC to “Divine,” “Him,” and “Divine.”The break between pages 52 and 53 is in the word “discriminating”: dis|criminating.Page 53, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Divine” and “Gospel.” Paragraph one, capitalize “Sermon on the Mount.”Page 54, point (4.), apply RC to “Divine”; remove comma from “theme, and.”Page 55, paragraph zero, point 5, apply RC to “Word”; remove comma from “effort, and.”Page 61, paragraph zero, remove comma from “alone, and”; apply RC to “Him.”Page 63, paragaph zero, point 3, apply RC to “Him.”The break between pages 63 and 64 is in the word “perhaps”: per|haps.Page 64, paragraph zero, change “exigences” to “exigencies.”Page 65, paragraph two, point 2, apply RC to “Gospel” and “Word.”Page 66, paragraph zero, add comma to “purpose have.”The break between pages 66 and 67 is in the word “stubble”: stub|ble.Page 67, paragraph one, remove comma from “bear, and.”Page 68, paragraph zero, point 3, change “centre” to “center.”Page 70, paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine” and “His.”Page 72, paragraph zero, point 3, apply RC to “Divine.” Paragraph one, change “centre” to “center”; apply RC to “Him.”Page 73, paragraph zero, capitalize “Passover.” Remove comma from “administration, but.”Page 74, paragraph one, remove commas from “school, and, believing.”The break between pages 74 and 75 is in the word “well-filled”: well-|filled.Page 75, paragraph zero, remove comma from “schools, and.” Paragraph one, point 2, remove comma from “women, and.”Page 77, paragraph zero, remove commas from “trashy, but” and “directly, and.”Page 78, section vii., paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine,” “His” (twice), “He,” “His,” “He,” “Him,” and “His.”Page 80, paragraph zero, remove comma from “one, and.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “Him” and “His.”Page 81, point I, paragraph two, apply RC to “Gospel”; change “exigences” to “exigencies.”Page 83, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel” (twice).Page 84, paragraph two, add comma to “reason it.”Page 85, paragraph zero, add comma to “turn they.” Paragraph one, add comma to “rule a.”Page 86, paragraph zero, add comma to “accessible and.” Point III, paragraph one, apply RC to “Word”; remove comma from “God, and.”Page 87, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Him.” Paragraph one, capitalize “Divine,” referring to a churchman. Paragraph two, add comma to “conversations new.”Page 89, paragraph two, add comma to “week he”; remove comma from “burnings, but.”Page 91, paragraph zero, apply RC to “His” (twice).The break between pages 91 and 92 is in the word “circumstances”: circum|stances.Page 92, paragraph one, point 3, remove comma from “friend, and.”Page 93, paragraph zero, add comma to “possible help”; apply RC to “He,” “Him,” “His,” and “Him”; change “Saviour” to “Savior.”The break between pages 93 and 94 is in the word “everything”: every|thing.Page 94, paragraph one, apply RC to “Gospel.” Section viii., paragraph one, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 95, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Divine” (twice), and “Gospel”; remove comma from “men, and.”The break between pages 96 and 97 is in the word “religious”: re|ligious.Page 96, paragraph one, apply RC to “Him,” “My,” and “His.” Paragraph two, point 2, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 97, paragraph one, remove comma from “it, and”; apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 98, paragraph one, change “scepticism” to “skepticism.”Page 101, paragraph two, point 2, change “centres” to “centers” (twice).Page 103, paragraph one, point 1, remove comma from “teaching, and”; add comma to “success the.”Page 105, paragraph one, point 3, remove commas from “appears, and” and “fact, and.” Paragraph two, point 4, remove comma from “watch, and.”The break between pages 105 and 106 is in the word “relinquishing”: relin|quishing.Page 106, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel.” Section xi., paragraph two, point 1, add comma to “then it.”Page 107, paragraph one, point 2, remove comma from “indulged, and”; change “offence” to “offense.”Page 108, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel” and “He”; remove comma from “accidental, but”; apply RC to “He” (twice) and “Gospel.”The break between pages 108 and 109 is in the word “acceptance”: accept|ance.Page 109, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Him” and “Gospel” (twice). Paragraph one, point 4, add comma to “standing and.”Page 110, paragraph one, point 5, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 111, paragraph one, apply RC to “Gospel.”The break between pages 111 and 112 is in the word “contribution”: contribu|tion.Page 112, paragraph two, point 3, remove comma for “this, or.”Page 115, paragraph zero, remove comma from “work, and.”Page 116, paragraph one, point 4, apply RC to “Word.”The break between pages 116 and 117 is in the word “eminently”: emi|nently.Page 117, paragraph two, point 2, change “defence” to “defense” (twice).The break between pages 117 and 118 is in the word “evangelical”: evangel|ical.Page 118, paragraph zero, change “exigences” to “exigencies”; apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph one, point 4, apply RC to “Gospel”; change “centres” to “centers”; apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 119, paragraph zero, point (2.), apply RC to “Gospel” and “Divine.” Point (3.), apply RC to “Word.”Page 120, paragraph one, remove comma from “country, and.”Page 122, paragraph zero, point 3, remove comma from “discipline, and.” Point 4, change “pretence” to “pretense.”Page 123, paragraph one, add comma to “Finally I.”Page 124, paragraph zero, remove comma from “necessity, and”; add comma to “certainly the.” Section XVI, apply RC to “His.”Page 125, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel” (twice).Page 126, paragraph zero, remove comma from “advisers, and.” Point 4, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 130, paragraph zero, remove comma from “him, and.” Paragraph one, point 1, change “dulness” to “dullness.”Page 133, paragraph zero, remove commas from “experience, and” and “pulpit, and.” Paragraph one, point 6, add comma to “it power.”Page 134, paragraph one, apply RC to “Apostles” (twice) and “Word”; add comma to “ministers we.”Page 135, paragraph zero, remove comma from “membership, and.”Page 136, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel”; add comma to “this he”; remove commas from “spirit, and” and “life, or”; change “he lose habits” to “he loses habits” and “fulness” to “fullness”; apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 137, paragraph one, apply RC to “Word.” Point 1, apply RC to “Gospel.” Point 2, apply RC to “Gospel” and “Divinely-constituted.”Page 138, paragraph zero, remove comma from “reason, and.” Section xvii., paragraph one, add comma to “respect they.”Page 139, paragraph one, remove comma from “study, and.”Page 141, paragraph zero, remove comma from “plan, and.”Page 142, paragraph one, remove comma from “mill, but.”The break between pages 142 and 143 is in the word “standpoints”: stand|points.Page 143, paragraph three, point 1, change “marvellously” to “marvelously”; apply RC to “Word.”Page 144, paragraph two, remove comma from “manhood, and.”Page 145, paragraph one, point 4, apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph three, apply RC to “Gospel”; and add comma to “Bible a.”The break between pages 145 and 146 is in the word “undiscriminating”: undiscriminat|ing.Page 146, paragraph one, point 1, apply RC to “Word,” “Divine,” “Word,” “His,” and “Divine.”Page 147, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 148, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Apostle,” “Gospel,” “He” and “His” (twice). Of Paul, point 2, apply RC to “Divinely-called” and “Apostle.” Of Paul, point 3, apply RC to “Apostle” and “Gospel.” Apply RC to “Gospel.” Of Christ, point 1, apply RC to “His” and “He.” Of Christ, point 2, apply RC to “His,” “Divine,” “He,” “His,” and “Word.”Page 149, paragraph zero, remove comma from “it, and”; apply RC to “Gospel”; remove commas from “text-book, and” and “thought, and.”The break between pages 149 and 150 is in the word “formation”: forma|tion.Page 150, paragraph two, apply RC to “His” and “Gospel.”Page 151, paragraph one, apply RC to “He” and “His.” Point 1, change “ch. iv. 9” to “Phil. iv. 9” for concreteness; change “unblamably” to “unblameably”; remove comma from “pulpit, and.”The break between pages 151 and 152 is in the word “proposes”: pro|poses.Page 152, paragraph zero, add comma to “evidently he.” Point 3, apply RC to “Gospel” and “He.” Point 4, apply RC to “Gospel”; change “doest” to “dost” to match KJV quotation. Paragraph one, apply RC to “His.”Page 153, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Divine” and “His.”Page 155, paragraph two, apply RC to “Gospel” (twice); change “exigences” to “exigencies.”Page 156, paragraph two, point 1, remove comma from “franchise, and.”Page 157, paragraph one, remove comma from “life, but.”Page 159, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph one, change “centres” to “centers.”The break between pages 159 and 160 is in the word “ministerial”: min|isterial.Page 160, paragraph zero, remove comma from “household, and.” Paragraph one, point 4, remove comma from “innocent, but.”The break between pages 160 and 161 is in the word “amusements”: amuse|ments.Page 161, paragraph one, point 5, apply RC to “Him” and “His.” Paragraph two, point 6, remove comma from “fact, but.” Paragraph three, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 162, paragraph one, point 1, change “dulness” to “dullness.”The break between pages 162 and 163 is within a unit (a scripture reference), “1 Cor. vi.|12.” The whole unit was moved to the earlier page.Page 163, paragraph one, point 3, apply RC to “Gospel.”Page 164, section xx., paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine.”The break between pages 164 and 165 is in the word “bursting”: burst|ing.Page 165, paragraph one, apply RC to “His” (twice), “He,” “His,” “He,” “His,” “Divine,” “His,” “He” (twice), “Himself,” “Him,” “His,” “Me,” “My,” “Myself,” “Divine,” “He,” “His,” and “He” (twice). Paragraph two, change “marvellous” to “marvelous”; apply RC to “His” and “Gospel.”Page 166, paragraph one, apply RC to “Apostles,” “He,” “Divine,” “Him,” “His,” “Apostle,” and “Divine.”Page 167, paragraph two, point I, apply RC to “Divine” and “His.”Page 168, paragraph one, apply RC to “Divine,” “His” (thrice), and “Him.”Page 169, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Divine” and “Word.” Paragraph two, apply RC to “Divine” (thrice), “Gospel,” and “His.”Page 170, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Word”; change “marvellous” to “marvelous.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “Himself” and “He” (twice). Poem, apply RC to “His.” Paragraph two, apply RC to “He,” “His” (twice), “Him,” and “His.”Page 171, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel”; change “centre” to “center”; apply RC to “Word,” “Thy,” “Thy Word,” “Gospel” and “Divine” (twice).The break between pages 171 and 172 is in the word “applying”: ap|plying.Page 172, paragraph zero, remove comma from “himself, and”; apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph one, point III, apply RC to “His.”Page 173, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Him.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “His,” “Me,” “My,” “Himself,” and “Gospel”; add comma to “self-dedicated he”; capitalize “The” after the colon, because a whole sentence follows the colon; apply RC to “Divine.”Page 174, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Himself.” Paragraph one, point IV, remove commas from “life, but” and “God, and.” Paragraph two, apply RC to “Gospel” and “His.”Page 175, paragraph zero, apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph one, apply RC to “His”; remove comma after “2 Cor. iv. 17” reference.Page 176, paragraph one, apply RC to “His”; add right double quote after “small thing”; remove comma after “1 Cor. iv. 4” reference; add comma to “thus will”; apply RC to “Gospel.” Paragraph two, apply RC to “He” and “Him.”