dress, are all submitted to the dissecting knife of merciless criticism; to say nothing of insinuations far more serious than any thing which has been mentioned; then he will be thrown into such paroxisms of feeling, that all his grace shall scarcely be sufficient to render him continent of wrath. A few years of such discipline will however cure him effectually of his dream, that the reproach of the cross of Christ has ceased. When the young officer appears upon parade, with his cloth brushed, his epaulets untarnished, and his weapons shining; he is delicately alive to the elegance of his appearance, and dreads a speck above the ancle. But when he comes to the endless marches and long battles; and finds himself covered with mud and dirt all over; he feels that he has something else at stake than the honour of his regimentals; and is so deeply interested in the temper of his sword, that he never thinks of its polish. When the famous Whitfield was condoled with upon the aspersions unjustly cast upon his good name, he exclaimed-"O my good name! Thank God that is gone long ago, and now I have nothing to attend to but a good conscience." If any man is ambitious of an unblemished fame, let him choose a private station, and mind his own affairs; let him pay his debts, and exact his dues, and take good care of himself, for saith the tongue of inspiration, "Men will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself."* But what, I pray you, can the man expect, (if he posesses common sense,) who undertakes to instruct the ignorance, combat the prejudices, refute the sophistries, reprove the sins, regulate the manners, control the consciences; to revolutionise, and new *Psal. xlix. 18. model the opinions, hopes, fears, pleasures, pains, éonduct, of a race like ours, prone to iniquity as the sparks are to fly upwards. Indeed he who becomes a minister of the gospel, gives his name to reproach, and becomes a martry by profession. It is not only the Philistines that will be upon him, but his mother's children will often be angry with him, and that for doing his duty. "Wo unto you," saith our Lord, "when all men shall speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets."* Wo unto you, your popularity is that of false prophets; your good name is the purchase of unfaithfulness; men praise you, because you indulge them in their career of self-destruction. Again the same divine lips have said: "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”† I shall not make a separate article of the contempt, with which the ministers of the gospel are supposed to be viewed in the world; because I am persuaded, that such a feeling towards them is rather apparent than real. Men can afford to treat a feeble opponent with contempt, because they know he can do them no harm; but a powerful enemy excites a far different sort of feeling. John Knox was a little, sickly, old minister of the gospel; and yet the queen of Scotland declared, that she was more afraid of his prayers, than of ten thousand armed men. may serve as a specimen of the world's contempt of such characters. This 3. The third discouragement to undertake the ministerial office, is far more formidable than any that I have mentioned, and has much more weight with conscientious minds; it is the awful importance, difficulty, and responsibility of the work. The thoughtless part of mankind form a very different opinion on this subject. They consider the ministerial office as an easy and elegant avocation. To their eye the gospel minister is a polite scholar, who regales his leisure with the fruits and flowers of ancient and modern genius; who has but little to do, and nothing to disturb his repose; who can compose and recite a tasteful and eloquent composition; and has much time to bestow upon the blandishments of cheerful social intercourse. I should be very sorry to suppose, that any minister of the gospel in this house, should entertain such an opinion of his situation. I am as sure as the case O! what a station have we admits, that you do not. ventured to accept! To be placed over some hundreds of souls, with this charge, If thou lettest this man perish through thy neglect, thy life shall go for his life; to be obliged, by official duty, to speak every word to the church of God under oath, with the penalty of perjury before our eyes; to be under bounden duty, to know that every doctrine which we utter to the church, is true; to waste our days, our nights, and to consume our animal nature, and weary out our intellectual nature, to learn and know the truth of God; to be instant in season and out of season; and * to see that no soul shall perish through our negligence! It is an awful station. And then, when one of your flock dies, without having exhibited good grounds of hope to think that he fell asleep in the Lord; to call to remembrance that you have not conversed with him for a long time; or that you have been in his company without directing his thoughts to the great salvation; only so much as to fear that you have not prayed for him with due zeal and earnestness— such are the considerations which drink up the spirits of the gospel minister; and which more truly, and more philosophically, account for the distresses and dejections of that class of men, than the vulgar insinuations of indolence and hypocondria. An apostle in pondering the awful results of the. gospel ministry, exclaims-"Who is sufficient for these things!" And indeed no man would at all be sufficient for them, were it not for that aid of the Holy Spirit which the Son of God bestows upon all his ministers. Lo, I am with you always unto the end of the world, is the promise with which he has sealed the ministerial commission. Without, however, saying any thing more of disadvantages, each of which is, in its own nature, connected with more than compensating advantages; let us turn our attention to the intrinsic excellence of the ministerial office; to the employments which it prescribes; the pleasures which it affords; the hopes which it inspires; and the specific and abundant rewards, which our gracious and just God has promised, and will in righteousness bestow upon all those, who discharge the duties of this office with industry and fidelity. If a man of inquisitive mind, desirous of devoting his talents to the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom, were to search among all the objects which are within the reach of the human understanding, for those which are the noblest; he would undoubtedly find them no where else, than in that department of human knowledge, which appropriates to itself the official studies of the gospel minister. I am above the meanness of representing any sort of knowledge as worthless and insignificant; and the subject which I treat is too rich in native dignity, to admit, that any object of human thought should be sunk in our estimation,in order that itself should seem important. It is in a fair scale that this subject will always preponderate most. The subjects which habitually engage the consideration of preachers are these; Jehovah and his perfections displayed in the works of creation and providence; human nature in the whole extent of its powers speculative and active; the relations of mankind; the nature of virtue and vice, rewards and punishments; the nature of true happiness and the means of attaining it; the origin of sin and misery, and the means of removing them; and a future state of rewards and punishments. In pursuing his inquiries into these subjects, the gospel minister is not left to wavering conjectures, or to dependance on the treacherous support of human authority; it has pleased God to communicate to him a text book, containing the elemental principles of the subjects which have been mentioned, and illustrating the proper modes of investigation, by numerous examples, This is the book which we call the Bible, or sacred scriptures. Every one must perceive then, that while the minister of the gospel studies the noblest branch of human knowledge, he is favoured with unparalleled advantages to facilitate his investigations. He has a divine guide. He, therefore, may, in the exercise of |