clear us of a desire to follow our Master without taking up the daily cross?" Are we not afraid of "being fools for Christ's sake?" Do we not sometimes "become all things to all men" when we ought to remember that "if we yet please men, we cannot be the servants of Christ."* Christian prudence indeed is a most valuable grace in its own place, connexion, and measure, and the want of it has often brought with it great inconvenience. But except it be the distinct exercise of the principle of faith, combined with boldness, and encircled with a warm atmosphere of Christian love, it is likely to sink its proper character and office under the influence of a degenerate spirit of the world. "The fear of man" often assumes the name of prudence, while a worldly spirit of unbelief is the dominant, though disguised principle. It operates also in the selection of society-often leading the undecided to prefer association with their brethren of a lower standard-or even with the world—rather than with those who bear the mark of the cross upon their Ministry.

But the fear of the professing Church is also a serious part of this temptation. We are afraid to exhibit the doctrines of grace in their fulness and prominence, lest we should be thought unmindful of the enforcement of practical obligation. The freeness of the Gospel invitations, and the unreserved display of Evangelical privileges, is often fettered by the apprehension of giving indulgence to Antinomian licentiousness. The detailed exposition of relative duties is partially withheld from the fear of the imputation of legality. What further

* Gal. i. 10. 'How sweet is it to have this testimony in our conscience, that one has not been afraid of men, when it was necessary to serve God.' Quesnel on 1 Thess. ii. 2.

† Compare 2 Tim. i. 7.

proof is needed to illustrate the retarding influence of this temptation upon the progress of our Ministry, than the recollection of two Apostles, beguiled for a short moment under its influence to deny the faith of the Gospel?* "With me”—said another Apostle to his people (whose determined resistance to the weakness of his brethren was the honoured means of their restoration) "it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment. He that judgeth me is the Lord." Where however the truth is thus "imprisoned," if not "in unrighteousness," yet in unbelief -there must be a want of power upon our Ministration. The direct violation of Christian integrity has a necessary tendency to enfeeble exertion-by diverting our mind from the main object, which should be always present, always acting supremely in the direction of our labour and time to the promotion of it, and compared with which every thing else is utterly unimportant the edification, and salvation of our people. The voice of conscience and of duty speaks with a weaker tone in a worldly atmosphere. The habits of self-indulgence are strengthened, and the exercises of self-denial proportionably diminished in frequency and effectiveness. Thus as the heart is more in the world, it is less in our work, and as the natural consequence, our duties are reluctantly performed, and unproductive in their results. Well-intentioned imprudence is far better than the frigid wisdom of this world, and it will invariably be found that those that act openly with an honest freedom, though they may probably commit mistakes, will be generally borne out, and find their path ultimately smoothed; while the

Gal. ii. 11-14. † 1 Cor. iv. 3.
VOL. I.

16

Rom. i. 18 in the Greek.

temporizing spirit, that aims to please God and man together, will meet with disappointment from both. Where God is not honoured, he will not honour. And in defect of that Christian boldness that becomes our Master's cause, our people under the influence of our example will sink into the same benumbed spirit, while their confidence in us will be materially weakened by the manifest evidence of our Ministerial inefficiency and unfruitfulness.

CHAPTER IV.

THE WANT OF CHRISTIAN SELF-DENIAL.

Ir may be generally remarked, that unless the Ministry exhibit the self-denying character of the cross of Christ, it is the Christian Ministry in the letter only, not in the spirit; it is not the work that God has engaged to bless. The motives to this Ministerial principle are indeed in themselves so operative, that, were it not for the strong current of counteracting influence, they would be found irresistible. The impressive solemnity of Ordination-in which we voluntarily bound ourselves to 'lay aside the study of the world and the flesh** -might be thought to give at the very outset an impulse, sufficiently powerful to carry us on through a course

* Exhortation in the Ordination of Priests: that is, as Archbishop Secker expounds it--not making either gross pleasures, or more refined amusements-even literary ones unconnected with your profession-or power, or profit, or advancement, or applause, your great aim in life; but labouring chiefly to qualify yourselves for doing good to the souls of men, and applying carefully to that purpose whatever qualifications you attain.'-Instructions to Candidates for Orders, appended to his Charges.

of habitual and necessary self-denial in the consecra-
tion of ourselves to the service of God. But the Chris-
tian principle has a continual struggle to maintain with
natural self-indulgence-the influence of old habits-
perhaps the habits of our former unconverted state-all
combining to lower the standard of exertion from
the Scriptural mark. The cultivation, therefore, and
renewal of the habit of self-denial are the springs of the
most beneficial Ministerial activity; and the want, or
the enervation of this habit will ever be found to relax
the whole system of our motives and encouragements.
Archbishop Leighton admirably sets forth John the
Baptist as an example of the spirit and temper of
Ministers of the gospel-' to live as much as may be
in their condition and station disengaged from the
world-not following the vain delights and ways of it-
not bathing in the solaces and pleasures of earth, and
entangling themselves in the care of it; but sober and
modest, and mortified in their way of living; making it
their main business not to please the flesh, but to do
service to their Lord, to walk in his
ways, and prepare
his way for him in the hearts of his people.* The
Apostle sets before us the habitual temperance of the
wrestler, as the illustration of his own Mintsterial
exercises, and as the appointed mean of preserving his
Christian stedfastness;† the necessity for which was in
no respect diminished by his high attaiments in the
Christian life. The missionary Eliot is said to have
6 become so nailed to the cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ, that the grandeurs of this world were unto him
just what they would be to a dying man. He persecuted
the lust of the flesh with a continual antipathy; and

* Lectures on Matt. iii. Works, vol. iii. 25.
1 Cor. ix. 25-27.

when he has thought that a minister had made much of himself, he has gone to him with that speech- Study mortification, brother, study mortification."* His biographer, in the same spirit, on his entrance on the Ministry, having met with the important remark-' that the want of mortification in a Minister is very often the cause of the unsuccessfulness of his Ministry,' resolved to read over Dr. Owen's valuable Treatise on Mortification, with some other books for instruction and direction on the same subject.† Henry Martyn appears to have deeply felt the incalculable value of Christian self-denial in the work of the Ministry A despicable indulgence in lying in bed,' he writes soon after his Ordination, gave me such a view of the softness of my character, that I resolved on my knees to lead a life of more self-denial; the tone and vigour of my mind rose rapidly; all those duties, from which I usually shrink, seemed recreations. I collected all the passages from the four gospels that had any reference to this subject. It is one on which I need to preach to myself, and mean to preach to others.' We might indeed apply the apostle's remark on a subject not wholly dissimilar--" If a man know not how to rule his own" self, "how shall he take care of the church of God?"§ The fidelity he owes to God requires the abridgment or relinquishment of whatever is inconsistent with his double obligation of "giving himself continually to prayer and to the Ministry of the word." He may

* Mather's Life of Eliot.

† Life of Cotton Mather, by his son. An excellent abridgment of which may be found among a valuable system of Christian Biography, now publishing by the Religious Tract Society. See some valuable hints on the subject of Christian Mortification, in the Life of Owen Stockton, republished in the same series. § 1 Tim. iii. 5.

Martyn's Life, p. 68.