The Responsibility of Enjoying the Christian Ministry
It is not easy to estimate the debt of gratitude Avliicli those portions of the earth owe to the distinguishing goodness of God, who enjoy the stated ministrations of his word. The Christian ministry is among the selectest blessings which can be enjoyed by men; one of the most important elements of individual, social, and national prosperity. It is the institution which, above all others, makes Christian lands what they are, girds them with a zone of light, and sheds upon them the balmy influences of heavenly mercy.
“What nation,” said Moses to ancient Israel, “is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous, as all this law which I set before you this day?” This was the pre-eminence of the Hebrew state; they were a better instructed and better governed people, a holier and happier people, than any of the surrounding nations. The God of Abraham was a “glory in the midst of them, and a wall of fire round about them.” There he set his “tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.” Speaking of the restoration of that backsliding and chastised people, after days of darkness and rebuke, God himself says to them, “Turn, O backsliding Israel, for I am married unto you; and I will take you one of a city and two of a family, and I will bring you unto Zion. And I will give you” — what is the gift that this greatest of all givers will give to his restored and reespoused people? — “I will give you Pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.” The Psalmist, in speaking of them, says, “Blessed are the people who know the joyful sound; they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance.” If this pre-eminence was enjoyed by the Jewish people, under a comparatively dark and shadowy dispensation, with how much stronger propriety does it belong to Christian lands, enjoying, as they do, so much clearer light, and that “better covenant, founded upon better promises?”
This is not a subject on which the Scriptures speak in doubtful or unemphatic language. They tell us of the gifts of God to men; above all others do they magnify his “unspeakable c:ift,” the gift ol’liis only and Avell-beloved Son. They speak too of gifts which his Son bestows, as the rewarded and rewarding Mediator; gifts whic’h he purchased by hisdeatli, and of which he is the honored dispenser. When lie ascended up on high, “he gave gifts to men,” worthy of his royal bounty, and such as he himself selected as the most fittini? and strikingexpressions of his munificence on his first accession to his mediatorial throne. “He gave — some. Apostles; and some. Prophets; and some, Evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry.”
These are the gifts he bestows on us. The “lines have fallen to us in pleasant places, and we have a goodly heritage.” We may glory in the vastness of our territory, and in the rapid growth of an enterprising population; we may survey with high and honest exultation the blessings of that civil and religious liberty which we have received from our lathers; but, if we are not recreant to the trust committed to us, and feel as they felt, we shall prize the Christian ministry. Amid all the beautiful and varied scenery which delights our eye as we look over this broad land, we shall not overlook her ten thousand churches; and amid all our delighted exultation, we shall remember that it is WTitten, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that piiblisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!”
Privilege and obligation are but correlative terms. The greater the privilege, the greater the duty, and the greater the sin of leaving it unperformed. We ask more for the pulpit, than that it be provided with a pious and well-educated ministry; — and we ask more for the ministry, than that it should receive an adequate pecuniary support, and be respected, and encouraged. We claim for it a practical regard of the truths it inculcates, and the duties it enforces. We ask for it that character, those hopes, and those efforts which it was instituted to attain and advance.
The first great duty which the pulpit urges, is “repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.” It holds up the simplicity of the method of salvation by a crucified Redeemer; — the simplicity of a spiritual faith in Jesus Christ, in opposition to that righteousness which is by the deeds of the law; — the simplicity ot Christian worship, in opposition to the tedious and complicated observances of all false religions. The just expression and proof of its power is found, when those who enjoy its dispensations cordially receive this system of truth and grace, and confide in that Saviour tlirougli Avliom llicy nre delivered from the curse of ilie law; whose blood answers every cliarGfc, covers every sin, enforces every plea, and itself pleads with irresistible power. Here’ lies the first and great responsibility of those who are favored with the Christian ministry. Men do not truly meet any one of its claims until this duty is performed. Their obedience to the Divine authority bcirins here; it is* vain for them to think of any thing like conformity to his will, so long as they reject him whom God has sent, and refuse his instructions who comes to them with so many attestations of his divine mission. We call upon men, therefore, everywhere, ta renounce their pretensions to self-righteousness, — to feel their sin and condemnation, — to be sensible of their inability to save themselves, — to be conscious that they have no claims, no merit, and to throw them selves upon him vpdio is the Author and Finisher of this great salvation. We call upon them to feel that for any good purpose they have nothing, and need all things; — to bow at his footstool, who is so holy that the heavens are not clean in his sight; and there where archangels bow, and devils tremble, to smite upon their breasts, and say, “God be merciful to me a sinner!”
Whence is it that men listen to the message brought to them by the Christian ministry, with not half the interest and eagerness with which they listen to a lecture on themes of mere secular interest? A lecture on astronomy, or history, or some important department in the arts; — a mere play at the theatre, or song at the opera, or a paragraph from the press, telling of battles lost or won, and treaties ratified or rejected, holds them in silent thought and admiration. But the lessons of God’s redeeming love; the song that was first rehearsed by angels on the plains of Bethlehem; the treaty of peace between heaven and earth, signed with the name of the ever-blessed and adorable Trinity, and sealed with the blood of the Lamb, — whose eye sparkles, whose bosom glows at messages like these; and where are the voices that repeat these glad tidings? Bold operations in business interest them; — the aged gather up their wandering and rouse their torpid thoughts, and the young take fire at the doubtful enterprise; — but tell them of durable riches and righteousness, of heavenly gems and diadems brighter than Gabriel wears, and they make light of it; it is tame — to listen to it is a task.
What miserable, — what guilty delusion is this! I look around me, and see men following their different secular pursuits with all the ardor and zeal they are capable of exercising. Difficulty and dangers do not discourage them, but rather give energy to their efforts; they are not pliaiitoms and trifles that they are pursiiinir, but realities. But there is one thing about tiieni all which they have forgotten, and that is, their uncertainty. They “know not what shall be on the morrow.” They are eagerly grasping the “greatest, the most sli])pery uncertainties’’ This is a remarkable fact in the history of man. There is but one certain event in all his future course. Be he high or low, rich or poor, learned or unlearned, happy or miserable, young or old, the friend of God, or his enemy; there is not one among all the millions of our race, who can, with certainty, anticipate any other event in his future history, save the single one, that he must die. But shut out this message of God’s redeeming mercy, and what a fearful certainty is death! Perad venture his course may be serene and cheerful up to that turn of sadness; but there darkness overshadows him — terror agitates him — deep and heavy clouds settle over the gates of death. All beyond, — what is it? Yet is there a “clcarino:” even through this dark valley; a bright opening; a vista of the heavenly world. O there is everything in death to make us dread its approach, apart from those principles and hopes, which rise like the star of promise on the soul.
“Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” The Ancient of Days, the Son of man, the Spirit of truth and grace in all their undivided love authorize this mission, and stand pledged to confirm the message which it bears. The words of men may be counsels of wisdom; — the words of God have the force of law. The words of men are of doubtful verity; — the words of God are truth. The words of men may be unaccomplished words; — God’s counsel shall stand, and he will do all his pleasure. The heavens and the earth shall pass away, but his words shall never pass away. Wonderful as these truths are, gracious as they are, and tremendously fearful as they are, they are as unchangeable as the Deity; they are settled in heaven, and established forever. There is all the sincerity about them which belonos to the essence of truth and goodness; all the authority belongs to them which belongs to Infinite rectitude and Omnipotent justice. They are fixed and permanent as his throne; they will never be retracted, never altered; nor are they revealed in such a way as to stifle our hopes, or excite one needless fear. There is nothing wavering, nothing uncertain in relation to any one feature of this Gospel; come what will, it will stand in all its forms and colors, in all its promises, and in all its threatenings. Whether men receive, or reject it, it shall pursue its steady course, impelled by an unseen, but Omniy)otent hand, and bring everlasting glory to its Divine Author.
How constraining the motive, then, to listen and obev when God thus addresses us! How solemn the admonition, “See that ye refuse not him that speakcth; for if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth; how much more shall not we escape, if we refuse him that speaketh from heaven!” There was binding authority in the message of the ancient dispensation; God w as its Author. Yet was it preparatory only to the one that “cannot be moved.” God “who at sundry times, and in divers manners spake unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.” Were an angel from heaven to visit our world, we should crowd around him, and should be anxious to know the errand on which he came. Angels have descended in times far gone by, and men listened to their errand with astonishment. But their message was a very subordinate one to that brought by the Son of God. “For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall they escape who neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him.” We have the same testimony. Men disregarded the voice of God’s prophets; they stoned some, killed some; “yet having one Son, he sent him, saying. They will reverence my Son!” It is the Saviour’s voice by vsiiom this message is uttered. He bows his heavens and comes down. He walks amidst the golden candlesticks. When his ministers speak in his name, he is with them -, when his people meet together, he is there. He will be sanctified in them that come nigh him, and before all the people will he be glorified.
It is a solemn thought, too, that to those who reject this divine message, it is as though no real message had been revealed. We have spoken of the power of the pulpit, of the constituent elements of that power, and of the correlative obligations of its ministry; but what is all this to the man who disregards the message it brings? It is as though the pulpit had no power; nay, it is as though there were not a Christian pulpit in the world. It is as though there were no Sanctuary, no Sabbath, and no Gospel and all the light of these precious hopes were blotted out in the darkness of Paganism, and in the gloom of the grave. Shall it be thus? Shall the voice of nature demand these instructions, and shall that affecting cry for help be suppressed? Shall the pulpit win its ten thousand triumphs, through darkness, through trial, through enemies, through the fasfiTot and the gibbet; and shall there be obduracy, more powerful than they all, that leaves the dwellers in Christian lands bound in chains to the ignominious car of sin and death? We have spoken of what the pulpit has done. Time would tail to tell of the millions whom it has made holy and happy. They have lived in peace, and when death came, have lifted their eyes to the eternal hills whence cometh their help. Over a world strewed with the ruins of a thousand generations, this message of heavenly mercy has passed with a life-giving power, quickening them who were dead in sin, and raising them Up to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
O the blessedness of this sweet hope in Christ! Just conceive of a man in the state of William Howard, so distressed by a view of his sins and danger, that he says, “So great was the anguish of my soul, that I lamented God had spared Noah and his family. O that they had been swept away by the Deluge; then I had never been!” And after he had become reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, speaking of his joy, he says, “My tongue, or pen can faintly describe it. All the bliss that I had ever enjoyed, was no more like it than midnight darkness is like the meridian sun. It was heaven indeed; something of the real nature of heaven I then enjoyed. My soul was wrapt in the embraces of the adorable Jesus, and I was so overpowered with holy love that I was lost to every thing else.” It is related of the Countess of Huntingdon, that she was brought to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus, through the instrumentality of the single remark of the Lady Margaret Hastings, that” since she had known and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, she had been as hapyy as an angel’’’ When the Sun of righteousness beams on the soul, sometimes rising like the faint light of the morning, and sometimes bursting upon the benighted mind in meridian splendor, joys visit it that are alternately serene and rapturous, now tranquil, and now unspeakable and full of glory.
The brightest earthly career has its trials, and they are trials which find no relief and no alleviation but from the Divine presence and favor. Here alone is the febrifuge for the burning heart; the pillow for the aching head.
“How soft to lean on Heaven! To lean on Him on whom archangels lean.”
This world forsakes us on the approach of the winter’s storm; before the chill blasts of adversity it retires. Not so the religion of the Gospel. Misery in all its forms has peculiar attractions for this message of heavenly mercy. The spirit of the world and the spirit which is of God often meet at the door of human wretchedness; but the former leaves it because the sources of its joy are dried up; the latter enters because there are sources of bitterness, and tears to be wiped away. Such love and pity are found in the Gospel of Christ, and only there, for misery and poverty like ours. Not until this celestial messenger is made welcome, can men be holy, or happy. The voice of reason, the voice of conscience, the voice of God, every cross and disappointment, and trial repeats the call, “My son, give me thy heart!” And O that, from that insatiable thirst for happiness so deeply implanted in the soul of man, every one of my readers may respond. My heart, blessed Lord, will I give!
But there is another alternative. “He that is not with me,” says the Lord Jesus, “is against me.” Those who reject this message of the Christian ministry, do so on their own resjjonsibility, and at their own ‘peril. “If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself; but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it.” Men who have been distinguished for the success which crowned their labors, have also been distinguished for making hard hearts harder, and blind eyes blinder. There is a reason for this in the nature of their message; for the very truths which are most fitted to interest and impress, when long and perseveringly rejected, only leave the mind more obdurate. This is the way men become ripe for destruction; it is in the midst of scenes of mercy, where they wander as in a desert and parched land, and whence they go at last, where there is not a drop of water to cool their tongue. This is the direful catastrophe. This will he the end of disregarding and rejecting the message of the Christian ministry. As God liveth, this will be the mournful end of rejecting these messages of heavenly mercy. It is no common responsibility that such men incur. If the smallest talent must be accounted for, what account must they render who all their lifetime have been favored with a preached Gospel, and who have only heard and rejected this gracious message? How bitter the reflections of such a man, as he sees the last hours of human life passing away, and the lamentation is extorted from his bosom, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved!” What a fearful transition will that be from the Christian sanctuary to the bar of God! There will be mourning then, when “many shall come from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south, and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God, and they themselves are cast out.” Ah, they know not what they do, to whom God has given a faithful ministry, and who reject the great salvation. They are not the atheist, and the infidel, and the immoral only who perish. Large and free as it is, the love of God is no refuge even for the moral and the orthodox, who treat the message of his ministers as they treat their Master, and tread it under their feet. It is the last message. Infinite love makes its greatest effort here. It cannot do more. “There remaineth no more .sacrifice for sin.”
When the rich man in the parable lifted up his eyes in hell, and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom, he cried and said, “Father Abraham have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame!” The time will come when the despisers of our message will cry for mercy, whether they ever did before or not. They will cry long and loud; they will lift up their voice in awful distress; but there shall be none to answer. Nor will it be long before that day of calamity shall come. It may be forty years; it may be twenty; it may be ten; it may be five; it may be two; it may not be one. Eternity is nearer than they think of, and that place of torment is as near as eternity. We know not what a day may bring forth. Yesterday is fled upon the eagle wings of time; to-morrow belongs to God and not to man. These golden Sabbaths will soon have passed away, and the voice of the living ministry will soon be silent among the silent dead. Could those who die in their sins come back again and live, its message would not be so urgent. But they come not. You call, and they answer not again. You look for them in the visions of the night; but it is all a dream. They appear not to mortal eyes; they .speak not to mortal ears. They are not in heaven, but are shut up in hell. Would that the man who rejects the salvation of God could be transported to eternity for an hour, if it were but to witness the agony of those who once occupied a place in God’s sanctuary, and whom nothing could induce to fall in with the redemption that is in Christ Jesus! O dreadful doom! not to be described by mortal tongue; yet to be endured by every mortal man that refuses this offered mercy!
If the writer dwells a moment longer on thoughts like these, it is because they are afiecting thoughts to his own mind, as a preacher of the everlasting Gospel. The Christian ministry is God’s selected instrumentality in accomplishing his purposes of grace. It is set for the defence of the Gospel, and for the vindication of the Divine government over this fallen world. Eternity alone can disclose the responsibility of preaching this Gospel; eternity alone can disclose the responsibility of rejecting it. Think of a man sitting for ten, or twenty, or forty, or sixty years under the varied influences of an instructive pulpit. What a vast amount of truth lias he listened to! How much toil and insrenuity have been expended in order to frame arguments to convince his understanding, to construct appeals that should rouse his conscience, to furnish illustrations that miffht interest him, and to urge motives that might persuade him to become reconciled to God! How often has he trembled at the rebuke, and wept under the affecting persuasions that would fain have constrained him to become a Christian! Who can measure the responsibility of such a man, even though he may have listened to the meanest pulpit in the land! That pulpit, what will be the testimony, and what his recollections of that pulpit, w hen the Saviour there made known shall judge the world in righteousness! What a stream of light has poured from it upon many a benighted mind, which, if it had enlightened Sodom and Tyre, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes!
Men who enjoy a faithful Christian ministry know too much of God and his Christ, to consent to go away into everlasting burnings. Better for them to have died from the womb.
or as an hidden, untimely birth that had not been, as infants which never saw the light, than to have been dwellers in this world of mercy, and at last make their bed in that lake of iire.
Behold, ye despisers, and wonder and perish! Adore, ye lovers of God and the Gospel of his Son, that by the foolishness of preachinghe is pleased to save them that believe!