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This is one of the secrets of ministerial strength and ministerial success. And who can say
how much of the overflowing infidelity of the present day is owing not only to the lack of
spiritual instructors—not merely to the existence of grossly unfaithful and inconsistent
ones—but to the

coldness of many who are reputed sound and faithful. Men can not but feel that if religion is
worth anything, it is worth everything; that if it calls for any measure of zeal and warmth, it
will justify the utmost degrees of these; and that there is no consistent medium between
reckless atheism and the intensest warmth of religious zeal. Men may dislike, detest, scoff at,
persecute the latter, yet their consciences are all the while silently reminding them that if
there be a God and a Saviour, a heaven and a hell, anything short of such life and love is
hypocrisy, dishonesty, perjury! And thus the lesson they learn from the lifeless discourses of
the class we are alluding to is, that since these men do not believe the doctrines they are
preaching there is no need of their hearers believing them; if ministers only believe them
because they make their living by them, why should those who make nothing by them
scruple about denying them? The inconsistencies of the popish priesthood have made
Italy a land of infidels; and ought we not to search ourselves and see how much of
modern infidelity may be traced to the indolence, the coldness, the cold orthodoxy of the
Protestant ministry at home? "Rash preaching," said Rowland Hill, "disgusts; timid
preaching leaves poor souls fast asleep; bold preaching is the only preaching that is owned
of God."

It is not merely unsoundness in faith, nor negligence in duty, nor open inconsistency of life
that mars the ministerial work and ruins souls. A man may be free from all scandal either
in creed or conduct, and yet may be a most grievous obstruction in the way of all
spiritual good to his people. He may be a dry and empty cistern, notwithstanding
his orthodoxy. He may be freezing or blasting life at the very time he is speaking of
the way of life. He may be repelling men from the cross even when he is in words
proclaiming it. He may be standing between his flock and the blessing even when he is, in
outward form, lifting up his hand to bless them. The same words that from warm lips would
drop as the rain, or distill as the dew, fall from his lips as the snow or hail, chilling all
spiritual warmth and blighting all spiritual life. How many souls have been lost for want of
earnestness, want of solemnity, want of love in the preacher, even when the words uttered
were precious and true!

We take for granted that the object of the Christian ministry is to convert sinners and to edify
the body of Christ. No faithful minister can possibly

rest short of this. Applause, fame, popularity, honor, wealth—all these are vain. If souls are
not won, if saints are not matured, our ministry itself is vain. The question, therefore, which
each of us has to answer to his own conscience is, "Has it been the end of my ministry, has it
been the desire of my heart to save the lost and guide the saved? Is this my aim in every
sermon I preach, in every visit I pay? Is it under the influence of this feeling that I
continually live and walk and speak? Is it for this I pray and toil and fast and weep? Is it for
this I spend and am spent, counting it, next to the salvation of my own soul, my chiefest joy