CHAPTER XIV.

MINISTERS MUST BE MEN OF PRAYER.

AN occasional remark has been thrown out in the preceding pages, intimating the importance of prayer in the ministers of the Gospel. The thought is one which may not be passed over thus lightly.

The appropriate vocation of a minister of the Gospel is one which has much to do with God; it is a spiritual, and not a secular vocation. His own soul may indeed be greatly ensnared by this very circumstance; he must be familiar with spiritual things; this is his business, and he may be familiar with them as a matter of business only. If it be so with any of us, we are of all men most to be commiserated; because, "after having preached to others, we ourselves shall be cast away." If it may be said of any man in the world, that he lives very near to heaven, or very near to hell, it may be said of a minister of Jesus Christ. If he is not a pious man, he is among the most obdurate of the wicked; and though his feet may stand on the

highest mountains of Zion, he stands on slippery places, and shall slide in due time. If he is not a man of prayer, he is not a man of God; and had better be anywhere else, than in the pulpit.

Yet is the thought a pleasant one to the mind of a good man, that he is occupied in a religious, and not a worldly vocation; and that the privileges, as well as the obligations of the sacred ministry, have this great peculiarity. "We will give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word." This is the law of the pulpit. Ministers are "laborers together with God;" and their intercourse with him ought to be unembarrassed and intimate. Their life is one of continual, and in some respects, peculiar dependence on him; and on him their eye ought to be steadily fixed. This is their great support and comfort. Their personal trials are sufficiently numerous; and if they have not a refuge in God, and hide not beneath the shadow of his wings, the Comforter is far, far away. To no class of men is the thought more wel come and precious, that God is their friend, than to the trembling heart and jaded mind of his ministers. "More is he that is for us, than they that are against us!" Who better than they, know how to appreciate the inviting summons, "Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee;

hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast." Who more than they, have need to appropriate the promise, "For in the time of trouble, he shall hide me in his pavilion; in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me upon a rock."

But these are not the precise thoughts which we desire here to enforce. We speak rather of that intercourse which ministers have with God, as his commissioned servants, sent by him to perform a great work, and one in which they constantly need his assistance and direction. We would fain urge upon ourselves and our fellow-laborers, that delightful habit of prayer, in the cultivation of which the commissioned servants of God go to him under every exigency, and in which there is such an exceeding great reward.

There are ministers who are by no means slothful, and who possess a deep interest in their work, who yet labor to very little purpose, because their time is not profitably employed. Their course of reading and study is not so useful to them, as preachers, as it might be; and their out-door labor is not always so arranged as to subserve the pulpit. In this matter they need to be directed by wisdom that is from above, and should seek that direction as constantly as they ask for their daily

their hopes. The providence of God toward them seems to have scarcely an immingling of light with darkness; their cup is bitter, and full of wormwood and gall. Sins oppress them; Satan ensnares them, and his fiery darts compass them about on every side; terrors take hold on them as waters; God hides his face, and they are troubled; and they know not how to speak in his name. How various, and often how wonderfully mysterious, are the ways, the dark and intricate paths by which he leads his ministers! Sometimes it is by being left to great sins, and sometimes by being subjected to great afflictions; sometimes by the sins of others, and sometimes by the sweetness and richness of their graces; sometimes by friends, and sometimes being left friendless; sometimes by honor, and sometimes by dishonor; but always by methods which may be employed for their usefulness as the dispensers of his truth.

If a minister would give the pulpit its appropriate energy, he will make all his varied experience subservient to the duties of the sanctuary. The burden of every man's preaching will be very apt to be that which most interests his own mind and heart. It is the obvious design of God, both in the dispensations of his providence and grace, to lead their own minds to feel an interest in subjects, and thoughts, which it is of special importance they

discourse he is preparing is upon a topie which has been assigned him, and given him in answer to prayer. Nay, there is confidence ; there is courage and hope; there is joy; his own mind is stimulated by the thought, nor does the sacred excitement pass away until he has delivered himself of the burden, and his appointed message is made known.

More than this. It is no uncommon thing for the preacher to be greatly embarrassed in the choice of his subject; the embarrassment is not unfrequently a serious one, and occasions loss of time and effort. Sometimes it arises from the poverty of his own resources; sometimes from the difficulty of deciding between the conflicting claims of more subjects than one; and sometimes from the sluggish operations of his own mind. It is often a profitable embarrassment to the preacher, and constitutes a part of that intellectual and spiritual discipline, by which he is made a better man and a better minister. By it he is taught to think, and feel, and pray, and is brought to a deeper sense of his own littleness. He learns to have recourse to the Master who sent him; and he finds it available. The promise is good, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth liberally and without upbraiding." The writer has now in his thoughts a youthful minister of Christ, who had occupied almost an entire