ful saying; For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: if we suffer, we shall also reign with him if we deny him, he also will deny us. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel, according to the power of God: who hath called us according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an Apostle, for the which cause I also suffer these things; nevertheless, I am not ashamed. Thou, therefore, endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

Happy is the faithful minister of Christ amid all the severe afflictions to which he is sometimes exposed! Though "troubled on every side," yet he is "not distressed;" though "perplexed," yet "not in despair;" though " persecuted," yet "not forsaken" though "cast down," yet "not destroyed." All the violent attacks of his enemies must finally contribute to the honour of his triumph, while their flagrant injustice gives double lustre te the glorious cause, in which he suffers.

HIS HUMBLE CONFIDENCE IN PRODUCING THE SEALS OF HIS MINISTRY.

A PASTOR must sooner or later, convert sinners, if he sincerely and earnestly calls them to repentance toward GoD, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Nevertheles, though filled with indignation against sin, with compassion toward the impe

nitent, and with gratitude to Christ, he should, like St. Paul, in proportion to his strength, wrestle with God by prayer, with sinners by exhortation, and with the flesh by abstinence; yet even then, as much unequal to that Apostle, as he was unequal to his Master, he may reasonably despair of frequently beholding the happy effects of his evange. lical labours. But, if he cannot adopt the following apostolic language: "Thanks be unto God, who always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest, the savour of his knowledge by us in every place :" he will, at least, be able to say in his little sphere...." We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them, that are saved, and in them, that perish to the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other, the savour of life unto life." If he has not, like St, Paul, planted new vines, he is engaged, with Appollos, in watering those, which are already planted; he is rooting up some withered cumberers of the ground, he is lopping off some unfruitful branches, and propping up those tender sprigs, which the tempest has beaten down.

He would be the most unhappy of all faithful ministers, had he not some in his congregation, to whom he night with propriety address himself in the following terms: "Do we need epistles of commendation to you? Ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart. Are not ye my work in the Lord? If I be not an Apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to you; for the seal of mine Apostleship are ye in the Lord. For though ye have ten thousand instructers in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus have I begotten you through the Gospel.

When a minister of the Gospel, after labouring for several years in the same place, is unacquainted

with any of his flock, to whom he might modestly hold the preceding language; it is to be feared, that he has laboured too much like the generality of pastors in the present day since the word of God, when delivered with earnestness and without adulteration, is usually "quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow. He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully: what is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Is not my word like a fire; and like a hammer, that breaketh the rock in pieces? Behold I am against them, that cause my people to err by their lies and by their lightness therefore they shall not profit this people at all, saith the Lord."

Those ministers, who are anxious so to preach, and so to conduct themselves, as neither to trouble the peace of the formal, nor to alarm the fears of the impenitent, are undoubtedly the persons peculiarly alluded to in the following solemn passage of Jeremiah's prophecy: "Mine heart within me is broken, because of the prophets; all my bones shake, because of the Lord, and because of the words of his holiness. For both prophet and priest are profane; yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord. They walk in lies," either actually or doctrinally: "they strengthen also the hands of evil doers, that none doth return from his wickedness. From the prophets of Jerusalem is prophaneness gone forth into all the land. They speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord. They say unto them that secretly despise me, The Lord hath said, ye shall have peace and they say unto every one, that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you. I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they

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had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings."

Behold the reason, why nothing can so much afflict a faithful minister, as not to behold from time to time, unfeigned conversions effected among the people by means of his ministry. The husbandman, after having diligently prepared and plentifully sowed his fields, is sensibly afflicted, when he sees the hopes of his harvest all swept away at once by a furious storm; but he feels not so lively a sorrow as the charitable pastor, who after having liberally scattered around him the seeds of wisdom and piety, beholds his parish overrun with the noxious weeds of vanity and vice. If Nabals are still intoxicated; if Cains are still implacable; if Ananiases are still deceitful, and Sapphiras still prepared to favour their deceit; if Marthas are still cumbered with earthly cares; if Dinahs are still exposing themselves to temptation, even to the detriment of their honour, and to the loss of that little relish, which they once discovered for piety; and if the formal still continue to approach GoD with their lips while their hearts are far from him....a good pastor at the sight of these things is pierced through with many sorrows, and feels, in a degree, what Elijah, felt, when, overburdened with fatigue and chagrin, " he sat down under a juniper tree, and said; It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life: for I am not better than my fathers."

Indifference, in a matter of so great importance, is one of the surest marks by which an unworthy pastor may be discerned. Of what consequence is it to a worldly minister, whether the flock, about which he takes so little trouble, is composed of sheep or goats? He seeks not so much to benefit his people, as to discharge the more exterior duties

of his office in such a way, as may not incur the censure of his superiors in the church, who, possibly, are not a whit less lukewarm than himself. And if a tolerable party of his unclean flock do but disguise themselves three or four times in a year, for the purpose of making their appearance at the sacramental table, he is perfectly satisfied with the good order of his parish; especially, when the most detestable vices, such as extortion, theft, adultery, or murder, are not openly practised in it.

This outward kind of decency, which is so satisfactory to the worldly minister, and which is ordinarily effected by the constraining force of the civil laws, rather than by the truths of the Gospel, affords the faithful pastor but little consolation. He is solicitous to see his people hungering and thirsting after righteousness, working out their salvation with fear and trembling, and engaging in all the duties of christianity, with as much eager. ness, as the children of the world pursue their shameful pleasures or trifling amusements: and if he has not yet enjoyed this satisfaction, he humbles himself before GoD, and anxiously enquires after the reason of so great an unhappiness. He is conscious, that if his ministry is not productive of good fruit, the sterility of the word must flow from one or other of the following causes....either he does not publish the Gospel in its full latitude and purity, in a manner sufficiently animating, or in simplicity and faith: perhaps he is not careful to second his zealous discourses by an exemplary conduct perhaps he is negligent in imploring the blessing of God upon his public and private labours or probably his hearers may have conceived inveterate prejudices against him, which make them inattentive to his most solemn exhortations; so that instead of being received among them as an ambassador of Christ, he can apply to himself the proverb, formerly cited by his rejected