Monthly Archives: August 2018

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For the Raising Up of Holy Men

Andrew Bonar’s Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne is a bonafide spiritual classic.

Consider the following commendations and comments from some of God’s great men:

  • “This is one of the best and most profitable volumes ever published. The memoir of such a man ought surely to be in the hands of every Christian and certainly every preacher of the Gospel.” — C. H. Spurgeon
  • “That wonderful classic.” — W. Robertson Nicoll
  • “I am constantly hearing of the great good that book has been the means of doing.” — Alexander Whyte
  • “That converting and sanctifying biography.” — Bishop Handley Moule
  • Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s biography written by his friend Andrew Bonar is one of my most treasured possessions and has been a companion throughout almost all of my Christian life. M’Cheyne died when he was twenty-nine, but his life story has been for me personally a model of grace, and his ministry pattern a model for service. It is a book every young Christian man should read—more than once.” — Sinclair B. Ferguson

For my own experience, nothing outside of Scripture has done me so much spiritual good as Bonar’s Memoir.

Something of a Backstory

After M’Cheyne’s death in 1843, his close friends were eager to commission a story of his life and ministry. Because he was M’Cheyne’s closest friend and possessed the required gifts to tell the tale, Bonar was chosen to write the memoir. The Great Disruption of 1843 distracted him for a time—from May through September of that year. When Bonar finally put pen to paper, he wrote with determination, finishing the manuscript only three months later. The result was a volume of 648 pages, 166 of which are Bonar’s original biography. The remainder of the work contains M’Cheyne’s letters, sermon, and miscellaneous treatises.

Once it released, the book sailed off the shelves. The Jewish Herald said the Memoir “commanded a sale almost unprecedented in the annals of religious biography.” Andrew Palmer, who wrote a doctoral thesis on Bonar, says, “Though Bonar could have made a great deal of money from the publication of the Memoir, he received only a very moderate sum, and the copyright was originally secured by the remaining members of M’Cheyne’s family.”

One Author’s Experience

One of the more fascinating observations in my studies on M’Cheyne was Andrew Bonar’s experience in writing the Memoir. Here’s what we find in Bonar’s Diary and Letters about his work on the Memoir and its subsequent reception:

  • April 1843: “I am urged to have my Memoir of Robert M’Cheyne ready by the end of the year.”
  • September 30, 1843: “Beginning to write Robert M’Cheyne’s Memoir. This fills up all my leisure time.”
  • December 23, 1843: “Finished my Memoir of Robert M’Cheyne yesterday morning. Praise, praise to the Lord. I have been praying, “Guide me with Thine eye’ I may soon be gone”; but I am glad that the Lord has permitted me to finish this record of His beloved servant. Yet it humbles me. My heart often sinks in me. Just to-night I saw my soul full of nothing but self, and all that comes forth seems a black stream of selfishness.”
  • March 4, 1843: “The Memoir of Robert M’Cheyne is now just about to appear. O that it may be blessed!”
  • March 23, 1843: “It was on this day of the week last year, about sunset, that a messenger came and told me of Robert M’Cheyne’s illness. It makes the day very solemn. I have grown little indeed by that providence, though it seemed sent to us for that intention. Several of us are to observe Monday as a season of special prayer and fasting to ask a blessing on the Memoir and the raising up of many holy men.”
  • January 4, 1845: “Looking back on last year I feel how awfully little has been done for God. My soul has grown very little. My ministry this year has been little blessed. The Memoir of Robert M’Cheyne and my Tract on Baptism seem to me the chief way in which the Lord has been using me this year to any extent.”
  • March 27, 1845: “Received a letter to-day telling me of the blessed effects of Robert M’Cheyne’s Memoir on one in London, in which he refers to the anniversary of his death—the 25th, a day I did not forget. Many tokens have I received of the Lord’s blessing that book. It roused me to thanksgiving, and I began to think that, if I oftener thanked God at the moment, I might oftener hear of His blessing upon my labours. He lets us know in order that we may give praise.”
  • December 18, 1846: “I see that the prayers of so many friends who pray for me are, no doubt, the cause of my getting peculiar help in writing the Memoir and then, the [Commentary on] Leviticus, I have often felt things in study so plainly given me, not at all like the products of my own skill, that this is the way in which I account for them. The Lord sends them because of people praying for me.”
  • May 1, 1853: “After my Communion I heard of blessing upon the Memoir of Robert M’Cheyne in the case of one in Edinburgh.”
  • December 31, 1856: “Encouraged by hearing of a soul awakened through reading Mr. M’Cheyne’s Memoir in
    Guernsey.”
  • November 17, 1860: “Got to-night from Holland a Dutch translation of M’Cheyne’s Memoir. Praise the Lord, O my soul, that thus good is done in foreign lands by that book.”
  • December 31, 1864: “It is now evening, and just at the close of the most memorable year since the death of Robert M’Cheyne (Bonar’s wife died on October 15th). I shall remember this year, in the ages to come, as the year I came in a special sense into the valley of Baca. My heart still fails me as often as I realize my loss. But, Lord, make my beloved wife’s removal as blessed to me as was the death of Robert M’Cheyne to the public through means of his Memoir.”
  • July 13, 1876: “A minister from America cheered me greatly by telling me how M’Cheyne’s Memoir has been used there.”
  • August 2, 1884: “Have heard lately oi two cases in which the Memoir of Robert M’Cheyne has been blessed: one here, another in England.”
  • July 21, 1891: “Heard to-day that Mr. Sinclair, minister of Kenmore, who translated the Memoir of M’Cheyne into Gaelic, received more than one letter telling that it had been blessed to the reader.”

Lessons Learned

It’s striking to see the place the Memoir occupied in Bonar’s life. For nearly a half-century, words of the book and thoughts about the book were close to his mind.

In reading through Bonar’s notes, two simple spiritual lessons came to my mind. First, how often God works through biography. You don’t have to be an expert in church history to know how a religious portrait launched many mighty men and women into Christ’s service. The nineteenth century was an era in which biographies flourished. Our age has so shunned history that many have lost the desire to learn not just from, but also about the old saints. If the trend continues, it will mean poverty in our piety. We need another generations of pastors and scholars whom the Spirit fuels and fills to right Christ-exalting biography.

Second, the great books fly on the wings of prayer. Bonar comments about how a day of fasting and prayer was set aside before the Memoir went out for sale. Prayer for the book didn’t stop; it continued throughout the years. What we need today are books that have prayerful authors and prayerful readers. Let us pray down God’s blessing on the great books. Let us yearn for God to glorify His name and His Son through the expansion of edifying works throughout the world.

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Book Notice: The Prayers of Jesus

Mark Jones, the pastor of Faith Reformed Presbyterian Church in Vancouver, is one of my favorite theologians at work today. His works on Christology occupy a treasured place in my study.

I was thus overjoyed to discover earlier this week that his next work marries two subjects we need to study most often: Christ and prayer.

The Prayers of Jesus:
Listening to and Learning from Our Savior

Here’s how Crossway describes the book:

How should Christians pray? There is no greater example than Jesus Christ himself, whose prayer life while on earth reveals a pattern of seeking God’s help that believers can emulate. Written in a devotional tone, this book reflects on the content and structure of Jesus’s prayers, showing just how important prayer was to him during his earthly ministry. Drawing on wisdom from church history and offering practical steps for prayer in each chapter, this book teaches readers why, how, and what to pray, helping them follow in Jesus’s footsteps and imitate his example when it comes to relating to our heavenly Father.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

An Introduction to Our Praying Lord

1. Jesus Prayed From His Mother’s Breasts (Psalm 22:9–10)

2. Jesus Prayed “Abba! Father” (John 17:1)

3. Jesus Prayed in Secret (Luke 5:16)

4. Jesus Prayed the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13)

5. Jesus Prayed Joyfully in the Spirit (Luke 10:21)

6. Jesus Prayed Knowing He Will Be Heard (John 11:41–42)

7. Jesus Prayed for His Father’s Glory (John 12:27–28)

8. Jesus Prayed for His Own Glory (John 17:1)

9. Jesus Prayed Concerning Eternal Life (John 17:1–2)

10. Jesus Prayed For Us to Know God and Himself (John 17:3)

11. Christ Prayed For the Glory He Had Before the World Existed (John 17:4–5)

12. Jesus Prayed Concerning God’s Self–Disclosure (John 17:6–8)

13. Jesus Prayed For the Elect to Glorify Him (John 17:9–10)

14. Christ Prayed the Father to Protect the Church (John 17:11–12)

15. Jesus Prayed For His Disciples To Be Joyful (John 17:13)

16. Jesus Prayed for His Disciples in the World (John 17:14–16)

17. Jesus Prayed For His Disciples to Be Sanctified (John 17:17–19)

18. Jesus Prayed For Church Unity (John 17:20–21)

19. Jesus Prayed For Us To Receive His Glory (John 17:22–23)

20. Jesus Prayed for His People To Be With Him (John 17:24)

21. Jesus Prayed With Confidence (John 17:25–26)

22. Jesus Prayed in Great Distress (Mark 14:32–34)

23. Jesus Prayed For Deliverance (Mark 14:35–36)

24. Jesus Prayed For His Enemies (Luke 23:34)

25. Jesus Prayed With A Loud Cry (Mark 15:34)

26. Jesus Prayed His Final Prayer (Luke 23:46)

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Perils in Pastoral Ministry

Sunday’s coming. The Lord’s Day is on the way. And Christ’s preachers must be ready. We must gird up the loins, go, and proclaim Christ from behind the sacred desk.

It’s my regular practice to spend time every Friday and Saturday reading something that stirs my soul for Christ and for preaching His beauty. Today it was a chapter from J. W. Jowett’s book, The Preacher: His Life and Work. The selection is titled “The Perils of the Preacher.”

Before I summarize them, let’s get to know the old man a bit.

A Grave Preacher

blrudgbgkkgrhgookjqejllmvowobjikfzeqq_35After hearing the great Dr. Fairbairn preach, Jowett told his students at Airedale College, “Gentlemen, I will tell you what I have observed this morning: behind that sermon there was a man.” Although The Preacher provides scant autobiographical information, I always have same sense in reading Jowett’s work—there is gravity in his message.

Jowett was born in 1863 in Halifax, West Yorkshire. Like many great ministers before him, Jowett initially resolved to study law. God soon called him into the gospel ministry. He went on to train at Edinburgh and Oxford before assuming his first pastoral position at St. James Church in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The church held over 1,000 seats, and none were empty during Jowett’s ministry.

In 1911 he became the pastor at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. John Bishop says,

The church was crowded long before the hour of Jowett’s first service. Reporters crowded the side galleries, expecting to find a sensational preacher with dazzling oratory and catchy sermon topics on current events. Instead they found a shy, quiet little man, bald-headed and with a cropped white moustache, who spoke in a calm, simple manner.

He was at Fifth Avenue when he delivered the Lyman Beecher lectures on a pastor’s life and ministry. He stayed in New York until 1918 when he was called to succeed G. Campbell Morgan at Westminster Chapel in London. It was his last pastoral post, as he died in 1923.

The Preacher’s Perils

So, then, what are some common perils threatening pastors? Jowett mentions four.

  1. Deadening familiarity with the sublime. “I think this is one of the most insidious, and perhaps the predominant peril in a preacher’s life. A man my live in mountain country, and lose all sense of the heights. . . . The preacher lives almost every hour in sight of the immensities and the eternities—the awful sovereignty of God, and the glorious, yet cloud-capped mysteries of redeeming grace. But here is the possible tragedy: he may live in constant sight of these tremendous presences and may cease to see them.”
  2. Deadening familiarity with the commonplace. “There is an equally subtle peril of our becoming dead to the bleeding tragedies of common life.” Jowett mentions several things, but focuses mostly on a deadened sense of the tragedy of death. “Familiarity may be deadly, and we may be dead men in the usually disturbing presences of sorrow, and pain, and death. The pathetic may cease to melt us, the tragic may cease to shock us. We may lose our power to weep.”
  3. Possible perversion of our emotional life. “The preaching of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ demands and creates in the preacher a certain power worthy of emotion, and this very emotion becomes the center of new ministerial danger. . . . That is to say, the evangelical preacher, with his constant business in great facts and verities that sway the feelings, may become the victim of nervous depression, and in his nervous impoverishment his moral defences may be relaxed, the enemy may leap within his gates, and his spirit may be imprisoned in dark and carnal bondage.”
  4. The perilous gravitation of the world. “I say you meet that danger everywhere, but nowhere will you meet it in a more insidious and persistent fashion that in the Christian ministry. [Worldliness]  is round about us like a malaria, and we may become susceptible to its contagion.” “In the perilous gravitation of worldliness there is more than an illicit spirit of compromise: there is what I will call the fascination of the glittering.” “We may become more intent on full pews than on redeemed souls.“

Jowett’s remedy to such pitfalls is proper: a renewed commitment to Christ through the means of grace. “We must,” Jowett declares, “assiduously attend to the culture of our souls. We must sternly and systematically make time for prayer, and for the devotional reading of the Word of God. We must appoint private seasons for the deliberate and personal appropriation of the Divine Word, for self-examination.”

Brothers of the pulpit, if we do not take heed of our doctrine and practice, we will fall into a perilous condition. And Jowett warns what that will mean:

Our characters will lose their spirituality. We shall lack that fine fragrance which makes people know that we dwell in ‘the King’s gardens.’ There will be no heavenly air about our spirits. . . . We are wordy, but not mighty. We are eloquent, but do not persuade. We are reasonable, but we do not convince. We preach much, but we accomplish little. We teach, but we do not woo. We make a ‘show of power,’ but men do not move.

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Persevere in the Precious

Over the last month, Jeremiah has been one of the four books in my Bible reading plan. Jeremiah’s ministry has long captivated my attention and affection. I think it’s because there are some pronounced similarities between his life and mine (and many more dissimilarities, of course). There was a magnificent and undeniable call to the ministry. Big dreams and ambitions flowed from the start. But over the years, the disappointments quickly come to outweigh the delights. There’s also an introspective nature that can cause us to forget the Lord’s work.

How true it is that an inward-looking Spirit can rob one of joy in God’s service.

A Groaning Conscience

I’ve long thought that Spurgeon was something like a modern-era Jeremiah. He knew great highs in ministry, but melancholy was a most-familiar friend. One would assume that the “Prince of Preachers” stepped down from the sacred desk each with glad confidence, but his experience was different. He once said of his world-famous preaching ministry, “It is a long time since I preached a sermon I was satisfied with. You cannot hear my groanings when I go home, Sunday after Sunday, and wish that I could learn to preach somehow or other; wish that I could discover the way to touch your hearts and your consciences.” If you are anything like me, you offer a weary, “Hear, hear,” to such sentiment.

What then are we to do in such a situation? How might we respond when the demands of ministry are like a wet blanket on joy in Christ? We find an answer in one scene from the life of Jeremiah—especially one verse: Jeremiah 15:18.

When Ministry Breaks Your Heart

Let’s remember the context. Jeremiah had reluctantly taken up God’s commission to be His mouthpiece around 627 BC, about five years before King Josiah’s famous reforms. There are two overarching matters worth remembering about his prophetic ministry:

  1. It’s length. The book represents Jeremiah’s forty-plus years in the Lord’s service. The words we find in chapter 15 are not the words of a novice. They are the soul-cries of a man who has ministered for around twenty years.
  2. It’s difficulty. Jeremiah is known as “The Weeping Prophet” for a reason. He experienced the siege and fall of Jerusalem, and Judah’s subsequent exile. He knew profound opposition, discouragement, and affliction.

It’s the second point that I want to meditate. In Jeremiah 15, we find the prophet entering what is likely his third decade of ministry. And he’s discouraged. He’s asked if there is any hope for Judah (14:19). He’s pained by the Lord’s subsequent promise of unrelenting judgment upon Judah in 15:1–9, and so he complains to the Lord in 15:10–18. Jeremiah recalls the original delight of his ordination, so much so that he says in 15:16, “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.”

Years of toil and trouble had taken such delight, however. Jeremiah was so pained in ministry that he goes so far to accuse God of having deceived him (15:18). Ministerial sorrows cannot only rob the pastor of joy but can also remove his hope.

How God Breaks Our Complaints

For weeks now, I’ve meditated on 15:19, which represents God’s answer to Jeremiah’s ministerial complaint. Notice what God says, “If you return, I will restore you, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth. They shall turn to you, but you shall not turn to them.”

When God calls us to the gospel ministry, He calls us to an office full of difficulty. Sometimes that difficulty is bearing the burden of grief, as church members suffer and pass on to glory. Sometimes the challenge is unrepentant sinners whose iniquity poisons the body. Sometimes the difficulty is obstinate sheep who continuously demand a surprising amount of attention. Other times it’s the difficulty of constant criticism. These are all in addition to the regular disappointments we encounter: apathy toward the means of grace, complacency toward Christ, and the continual struggle for unity.

The Enemy will tempt us to respond to such difficulty with many sins, perhaps none more consistent than anger and self-pity. Anger looks outward in sin. Self-pity looks inward in sin. Jeremiah commits both trespasses in chapter 15.

Let’s notice two things about 15:19. First, notice the conditions: “If you return . . . If you utter what is precious.” The answer to Jeremiah’s despair that has resulted in anger and self-pity is repentance and renewed obedience. Pastor, could it be that you need to hear the same conditions today? Are you on the brink of preaching this coming Lord’s Day with a spirit of anger or wounded complaint?

Second, notice the promises: “. . . you shall stand before me . . . you shall be as my mouth.” The first promise is one of God’s presence, while the second assures God’s minister of power. What kindnesses from the King!

If we are to minister Christ’s gospel to His people and our community, we will need God’s presence and power—we will need God’s Spirit. According to this text, a Spirit-wrought ministry is one that thrives on repentance and obedience.

A Precious Ministry

One of the greatest preachers of the nineteenth century was Octavius Winslow. He was full of Christ and experiential wisdom. When Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle opened in 1861 none other than Winslow was found preaching behind its pulpit. His most famous work is probably the volume, The Precious Things of God. In it, Winslow meditates on twelve topics the Scriptures declare to be precious:

  1. The Preciousness of Christ
  2. The Preciousness of Faith
  3. The Preciousness of Trial
  4. The Preciousness of God’s Thoughts
  5. The Preciousness of the Divine Promises
  6. The Preciousness of Christ’s Blood
  7. The Precious Anointing
  8. The Preciousness of God’s Children
  9. The Preciousness of God’s Word
  10. The Preciousness of Prayer
  11. The Preciousness of Christ’s Sympathy with our Infirmities
  12. The Death of the Saints Precious

Do these twelve precious things of God saturate your preaching and pastoring?

God tells Jeremiah to “utter what is precious.” The prophet must take out the vile and worthless complaints from his mouth, iso thathe might be once again God’s mouthpiece. Oh, how convicting this is to me. My capability to complain too often drowns my delight in Christ. May the sweet nectar of God’s preciousness be my drink more than the bitter dregs of anger and self-pity.

May the Lord help us all to be faithful ministers of that which is precious.

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A Subtle and Dangerous Snare

If we are ever to see a revival in our nation, it will begin with a revival of real gospel ministry. Pastoral paradigms built on pragmatism must fall, and in their place, we will see a renewed passion for prayer and piety. The kind of preaching that the Spirit blesses (and the heraldic ministry that ushers in revival) is that which is saturated in prayer and comes from the mouth of a man consumed with holy love for Christ. Before he ever considers strategic vision, administrative planning, and staffing structure, God’s man must be a man of God—in doctrine and devotion.

Should God grant me many years in ministry, I want to see this kind of renewal visit our ministers. But such a renewal comes with a perennial peril.

Learning a Vital Lesson

As I’ve studied Robert Murray M’Cheyne over the last few years, one of the more noticeable lessons his life teaches is the full-orbed nature of pastoral piety. We need to understand this totality of holiness in two ways. First, for M’Cheyne, piety begins with love for Christ. It then flowers into every area of spirituality: devotion to prayer, God’s Word, the Lord’s Day, evangelism, friendship in the church, dependence on the Spirit, and “unfeigned humility.” Secondly, we must see that an earnest pursuit of piety is a dangerous one. We can make much of godliness—it’s necessity and nature—that people overestimate our actual holiness. It’s one thing to be a holy man, but it’s entirely different to be known, even famed, for holiness.

M’Cheyne was such a minister.

The Snare Exposed

M’Cheyne once wrote, “I earnestly long for more grace and personal holiness, and more usefulness.” Nothing communicates M’Cheyne’s longing more than his Reformation.

Written in late 1842 or early 1843, it is his ten-page resolution for personal holiness. In the first section, he concentrated on “Personal Reformation,” saying,

I am persuaded that I shall obtain the highest amount of present happiness, I shall do most for God’s glory and the good of man, and I shall have the fullest reward in eternity, by maintaining a conscience always washed in Christ’s blood, by being filled with the Holy Spirit at all times, and by attaining the most entire likeness to Christ in mind, will, and heart, that it is possible for a redeemed sinner to attain to in this world.

M’Cheyne proceeded to delineate a scheme for personal holiness that would enable him to live in increasing communion with Christ. The plan included strategies for confessing sin, reading Scripture, applying Christ to the conscience, being filled with the Spirit, growing in humility, fleeing temptation, meditating on heaven, as well as studying specific Christological subjects.

His devotion to Christ was so renown that almost every epigram after his death referred to him as “the saintly ministry” or “the godly pastor” of St. Peter’s. His friend and biographer, Andrew Bonar, made an astute observation on a common pitfall in pastoral piety:

An experienced servant of God has said, that, while popularity is a snare that few are not caught by, a more subtle and dangerous snare is to be famed for holiness. The fame of being a godly man is a great a snare as the fame of being learned or eloquent. It is possible to attend with scrupulous anxiety even to secret habits of devotion, in order to get a name for holiness. If any were exposed to this snare in his day, Mr. M’Cheyne was the person. Yet nothing was more certain than that, to the very last, he was ever discovering, and successfully resisting, the deceitful tendencies of his own heart, and a tempting devil. Two things he seems never to have ceased from—the cultivation of personal holiness, and the most anxious efforts to save souls.

Examine Yourself

Ever since I first read it, these two sentences in the quote above have been a constant warning: “The fame of being a godly man is a great a snare as the fame of being learned or eloquent. It is possible to attend with scrupulous anxiety even to secret habits of devotion, in order to get a name for holiness.”

I’m not known as a holy man. But I recognize how easy it is to devote oneself to the means of grace and forget that your real motivation is selfish to the core: “I make much of such devotion so people will make much of my devotion.” Thus, the pastor’s pursuit is only in service of self, not the Savior. The Spirit won’t revive His church with such a man.

Pastors then must be wary of their motives in pursuing piety. They must resist the praise of men, and live only for the smiles of God. They must recognize how the devil schemes, even in our noble endeavors, and live for Christ’s honor alone.

True holiness is noticeable. Vital godliness leaves a mark. Paul’s teaching to Timothy demands it: “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Tim. 4:15–16).

So, yes, let’s pursue personal holiness with extraordinary vigor. But test your motives. Make sure they aren’t, at the root, just a scheme “to get a name for holiness.”

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Danger Lurks Near The Sacred Desk

Temptations fly at preachers as mosquitos swarm in a swamp. Archibald Alexander knew this well. To read his teachings on pastoral ministry is to read not only expert wisdom, but also experienced wisdom. No novice teacher can pen the paragraphs below.

The pulpit is perhaps, the severest ordeal of piety in the world. The man in secret might have felt humbled, on account of his sins, and seriously concerned for the salvation of his fellowmen; but when he rises in the pulpit, and hundreds of eyes are fixed on him, and multitudes are observing his performance, he can with difficult avoid feeling his attention drawn to himself, and a strong desire to acquit himself as to meet public expectation, and at any rate to rise above contempt.

And if a man has acquired already some degree of popularity, he naturally feels a strong desire to preserve the reputation which he has acquired. And these thoughts relating to his own dear popularity, may so get possession of his mind, that with every word which he utters, and every gesture which he makes, the thought may involuntarily occur, ‘How will this be received?’ Or, perhaps, in a form more hateful, ‘that is well spoken’—’that will be admired’—or ‘that will instruct the audience.’

And if he preaches with liberty, and some degree of eloquence, self-complacency is apt to arise in the mind. The deceitfulness and deep depravity of the human heart, never appears more evidently than in the pulpit. If all the thoughts which pass thro’ the preachers mind were exposed in their naked deformity to the view of the people, how would he be ashamed and confounded!

May the Lord enable His preachers to know true humility and vital piety in the pulpit. May the Lord protect us from seeking man’s praise. May He give us hearts that long to proclaim Christ alone.