THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH (OR BAPTIST) MAGAZINE. No. CCXCIV.-JUNE 1, 1868. Essays, Expositions, &c. PREPARATIONS FOR AN EFFECTUAL MINISTRY. BY REV. HORATIO N. POWERS. A CHRISTLY nature is needed for doing Christ's work. He who enters most deeply into the life of the Master shall minister most like him who gave his life a ransom for many. It is one thing to enunciate a dogma, and another to interpret Christ. A few sentences culled here and there from accredited divines and accepted religious formularies will suffice to establish a man's orthodoxy; but the spirit of Jesus alone can bestow the credentials of one's apostleship. Divine knowledge is no musty compilation. It cannot be gathered as men gather geographical and statistical facts, and transmitted from hand to hand. It is a life, a power working from inward depths and illustrating its heavenly source. The soul does not get its loyal affections, its blessed insights, its sweetness of sensibility and sympathy, its heroic enthusiasm, its great joy in purity and truth, from any mere acquaintance with councils and commentaries. There are depths which a man must fathom, heights which he must ascend, battles which he must fight, realities of the invisible world which he must experience, before he can largely and truly interpret the lovely and awful beauty and rich and majestic fullness of Christ, the king and Saviour. To speak mightily to me must give voice to their inarticulate cravings, and yearn over them possibilit wrest e1 sympathy that comprehends their worth, their o command their confidence, he must have ivered with their sufferings, and stood on r shrink afraid. He can come into sacred the door of Christ's inspiring brotherhood. , and aching, and sinful hearts, but such as rificial love that cleanses, and consoles, and rther than he has learned himself. Human sensible Christian disparages it. Ample I science are requisite to the complete furniis a higher preparation, something far more effectually to human souls. There must be nd the symbol, deep as the heart, and vital to it in all paths that deepen his fellowship m the power and glory of his cross and life. THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH (OR BAPTIST) MAGAZINE. No. CCXCIV.-JUNE 1, 1868. Essays, Expositions, &c. PREPARATIONS FOR AN EFFECTUAL MINISTRY. BY REV. HORATIO N. POWERS. A CHRISTLY nature is needed for doing Christ's work. He who enters most deeply into the life of the Master shall minister most like him who gave his life a ransom for many. It is one thing to enunciate a dogma, and another to interpret Christ. A few sentences culled here and there from accredited divines and accepted religious formularies will suffice to establish a man's orthodoxy; but the spirit of Jesus alone can bestow the credentials of one's apostleship. Divine knowledge is no musty compilation. It cannot be gathered as men gather geographical and statistical facts, and transmitted from hand to hand. It is a life, a power working from inward depths and illustrating its heavenly source. The soul does not get its loyal affections, its blessed insights, its sweetness of sensibility and sympathy, its heroic enthusiasm, its great joy in purity and truth, from any mere acquaintance with councils and commentaries. There are depths which a man must fathom, heights which he must ascend, battles which he must fight, realities of the invisible world which he must experience, before he can largely and truly interpret the lovely and awful beauty and rich and majestic fullness of Christ, the king and Saviour. To speak mightily to men, he must give voice to their inarticulate cravings, and yearn over them with a sympathy that comprehends their worth, their possibilities, and their needs. To command their confidence, he must have wrestled with their temptations, quivered with their sufferings, and stood on the brink on which they sport or shrink afraid. He can come inte sacred intimacies with souls only through the door of Christ's inspiring brotherhood. No medications will avail with sick, and aching, and sinful hearts, but such as are given in the spirit of that sacrificial love that cleanses, and consoles, and saves. No one can teach Christ further than he has learned himself. Human learning is always valuable, and no sensible Christian disparages it. Ample and exact attainments in theological science are requisite to the complete furniture of the man of God. But their is a higher preparation, something far more essential than this for ministering effectually to human souls. There must be a knowledge below the letter, behind the symbol, deep as the heart, and vital as life itself. The believer is led to it in all paths that deepen his fellowship with Jesus, and reveal within him the power and glory of his cross and life. VOL XXV.-NO. CCXCIV. M Grafted into him, living on him by faith, and obedient to his inspirations, something more and more precious is disclosed of his fullness, the soul is brought into closer relation with him, in all providential discipline, in all spiritual growths and enrichments in his friendship, and especially in the more thorough crucifixion of the old man and his lusts. It is a breaking away from the false and the defiling, a baptism into deeper waters, a translation to higher mounts of vision, a centralisation of life on the supreme good, a realisation of the entire sufficiency of the Crucified One to meet all the demands of the soul under the most peculiar circumstances, that contributes a blessed tuition to the minister of the new covenant. Sickness bearing one so near the celestial world that its light begins to stream over its border into this; bereavements behind whose thick cloud shine the immortal stars and sound the sweet voices that die no more; luminous days when the summer of love broods over the adoring and rejoicing soul-sorrow, joy, burdens, faith made strong through struggling and peace born in the heart of pain-whatever cuts life from its earthly moorings, stirs it with infinite hunger, deepens its delight in Christ, and sets in rich array the glories of the Holy City-help to prepare the Christly and prophetic soul for bearing the good news of salvation to the needy and the lost. He who has drank deep from the bitter cup will be tender with the weary sufferer. He who has been led through ways that he knew not to his Father's house will be least despairing of the prodigal's return. Arrogance of churchmanship, priestly exclusiveness, pharisaic pride, vanish in the inspiring sense of a present personal salvation, and the blessed charity of the atoning and consoling Christ. Escaped from the mazes of scepticism and the mires of sin, purged by refining fires, caught up to mounts of victory singing the praises of the Great Deliverer, and resting at the foot of the cross utterly satisfied with the Lord, his righteousness, the man can give strong testimony of him who can save to the uttermost. Nothing but Jesus Christ received as a life can break the fetters of caste and sectarianism, eradicate ecclesiastical conceit, and bring the bearer of the glad tidings down to the heart of a needy and suffering humanity. We do not understand him till we feel the spirit of his sacrifice and charity. His gospel is not good news to us till from its radiance in our own hearts we see it beaming on all the gloom and misery of the world. To be able to exercise a faithful pastorate, we must go with him in humiliations, in gracious compassions, in lonely watchings, in victorious faith, from the manger to the broken sepulchre. So, knowing Him by an interior transformation and the grace of his atonement, we learn the mystery of his love and the beatitude of his discipleship. We have the key to the aching, bleeding, blinded, bewildered hearts of our fellowmen, and can come to them with messages that they can understand. Then we bring to dying sinners no chaff of dead polemics. We do not proclaim as the gospel matter that we have indolently gathered from pious books of past generations. We do not stigmatise as infidels all who sadly grope for the light, but who see not yet as we see the ineffable beauty of the King. Error of opinion is then innocent in our esteem, compared with falseness and foulness of life. Having the sacred clew to the labyrinths of affection and desire, we appreciate the difficulties of the sincere, the necessities of the broken-hearted, the temptations of the erring, while we see the capacity of the gospel to supply every spiritual need. Detecting the faint dawnings of the new life in the penitent, waiting long without discouragement for the good seed to germinate in unwilling hearts, tender with unsettled but serious natures, quick to bring cheer to the disconsolate, faithful to the light that is within us, and serenely confident that the cross will triumph in all the earth, we can follow the Master's steps to homes of poverty and pain, to deserts of solitude, to the grave of buried hopes, to Gethsemane and Calvary, comprehending more and more of that great love that embraced us while we were yet sinners, and which still enfolds a needy and suffering race. O, how the light of that love fills the horizon of the true pastor's vision with a great splendour of blessed hope, and rises upon the world's darkness the very sun of righteousness with healing in its wings. |