possible that it should have a saving effect upon those who do not enjoy it. A community without the preached Gospel! There is nothing worth living for in such a community. It may be rich in rivers, in ore, and luxuriant in soil; it may be well watered as the plains of Sodom, and as accursed as they. I would not educate a family of children in such a community, for all the prairies between the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains. Of what value are lands, and rivers, and forests, if the pearl of great price is not there?

We are driven to the conclusion, that the deficiency in the support of ministers is to be attributed to a defective estimate of this hidden pearl.

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CHAPTER XXII.

PRAYER FOR MINISTERS.

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SUCH is the importance of the Christian ministry, that we are constrained to solicit for it one particular favor. It is a request in which we feel a deep personal concern. Pray for us. Pray for us," says Paul; pray for us is the hearty response from every Christian pulpit in the land, and in the wide world. If the prayers of good men were solicited by such a man as Paul; and if, with his giant intellect, his eminent spirituality, and his intimate communion with God and things unseen, this holy man needed this encouragement and impulse in his work; who will not say. Brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified!"

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It is a delightful thought to a young man entering upon the ministry of reconciliation that, unworthy as he is, the prayers of thou sands of God's people are continually going up, on his behalf, to his Father and their Father, to his God and their God. He seems to

hear the Church of God saying to him, We cannot go to this sacred work; but we will follow you with our prayers! He seems to hear many a Christian parent say to him, We have no son to send to this hallowed vocation; but go you to it, and you shall not want an interest in our prayers! Not a few of the churches of this land have enjoyed the high privilege of sending forth into the spiritual harvest, no inconsiderable number of beloved youth from their own more immediate family. And it has been the usage of such churches, to an extent that is gratefully remembered, to assemble for the more special service of commending their young brethren to the care and faithfulness of a covenant keeping God. How fitting, in every way, is such a service! how full of encouragement to the heart that trembles under a view of the responsibilities of the sacred office! how delightful this spiritual impetus to a mind almost ready to sink under its own conscious infirmities! And how unspeakably precious the thought to all who labor in this great work, whether in youthful, or riper years, that they are thus habitually remembered in the prayers of the churches! Let the thought sink deep into the heart of every church, that their minister will be very much such a minister as their prayers may make him. If nothing short of Omnipotent grace

can make a Christian, nothing less than this can make a faithful and successful minister of the Gospel.

We entreat the churches to regard with a more deliberate and devout mind the great work itself to which their ministers are devoted. To explain the doctrines and enforce the duties of genuine Christianity; to defend the truth against all the subtlety and versatility of error; to sustain within their own minds that sense of God's presence, and of those moral sanctions which are revealed in his word, and that deep and tender impression of the things that are unseen and eternal, that are necessary to give earnestness, and that consistent life and deportment that are necessary to give effect to their preaching; to do this in a way that shall adapt itself to times, places, occasions and characters, and without being disheartened by difficulties, appalled by enemies, and weary of the yoke which they have taken upon them, is no ordinary work If a people are looking for rich discourses from their minister, their prayers must supply him with matter; if for faithful discourses, their prayers must urge him, by a full and uncompromising manifestation of the truth, to commend himself to every man's conscience in the sight of God; if for powerful and successful discourses, their prayers must make him a

Would they

blessing to the souls of men. have him come to them in the fulness of the blessings of the Gospel of peace, with a heaving bosom, a kindled eye, and a glowing tongue, and with discourses bathed in tears and elaborate with prayer; their prayers must urge him to pray, and their tears inspire his thrilling heart with the strong yearnings of Christian affection. It is in their own closets that the people of God most effectually charge upon the soul of their beloved ministers, to take heed to the ministry they have received of the Lord Jesus.

And who and what are ministers themselves? Frail men, fallible, sinning men, exposed to every snare, to temptation in every form; and, from the very post of observation they occupy, the fairer mark for the fiery darts of the Foe. They are no mean victims the great Adversary is seeking, when he would wound and cripple Christ's ministers. One such victim is worth more to the kingdom of darkness than a score of common men; and on this very account, their temptations are probably more subtle and severe, than those encountered by ordinary Christians. If this subtle Deceiver fails to destroy them, he artfully aims at neutralizing their influence by quenching the fervor of their piety, lulling them into negligence, and doing all in his