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producing this deterioration in the spirituality of our minds. The study of truth in its
dogmatical more than in its devotional form has robbed it of its freshness and power;
daily, hourly occupation in the routine of ministerial labor has engendered formality and
coldness; continual employment in the most solemn duties of our office, such as dealing
with souls in private about their immortal welfare, or guiding the meditations and devotions
of God's assembled people, or handling the sacramental symbols—this, gone about often
with so little prayer and mixed with so little faith, has tended grievously to divest us
of that profound reverence and godly fear which ever ought to possess and pervade
us. How truly, and with what emphasis, we may say: "I am carnal, sold under sin." The
world has not been crucified to us, nor we unto the world; the flesh, with its members, has not
been mortified.

What a sad effect all this has bad, not only upon our peace of soul, on our growth in grace,
but upon the success of our ministry!

3. We have been selfish. We have shrunk from toil, difficulty and endurance, counting not
only our lives dear unto us, but even our temporal ease and comfort. "We have sought to
please ourselves," instead of "pleasing every one his neighbour, for his good to edification."
We have not borne "one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." We have been
worldly and covetous. We have not presented ourselves unto God as "living sacrifices,"
laying ourselves, our lives, our substance, our

time, our strength, our faculties—our all—upon His altar. We seem altogether to have lost
sight of this self-sacrificing principle on which even as Christians, but much more as
ministers, we are called upon to act. We have had little idea of anything like sacrifice at all.
Up to the point where a sacrifice was demanded, we may have been willing to go, but
there we stood; counting it unnecessary, perhaps calling it imprudent and unadvised, to
proceed further. Yet ought not the life of every Christian, especially of every minister, to be
a life of self-sacrifice and self-denial throughout, even as was the life of Him who "pleased
not himself"?

4. We have been slothful. We have been sparing of our toil. We have not endured hardness as
good soldiers of Jesus Christ. Even when we have been instant in season, we have not been
so out of season; neither have we sought to gather up the fragments of our time, that not a
moment might be thrown idly or unprofitably away. Precious hours and days have been
wasted in sloth, in company, in pleasure, in idle or desultory reading, that might have
been devoted to the closet, the study, the pulpit or the meeting! Indolence, self-indulgence,
fickleness, flesh-pleasing, have eaten like a canker into our ministry, arresting the
blessing and marring our success. It can not be said of us, "For my name's sake [thou] hast
labored, and hast not fainted." Alas! we have fainted, or at least grown "weary in well-
doing." We have not made conscience of our work. We have not dealt honestly with the
church to which we pledged the vows of ordination. We have dealt deceitfully with God,
whose servants we profess to be. We have manifested but little of the unwearied,