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peaceful course. His life is blessed; his example is blessed; his intercourse is blessed;
his words are blessed; his ministry is blessed! Souls are saved, sinners are converted, and
many are turned from their iniquity.

CHAPTER 3

Past Defects

"O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God…

0 our God, what shall we say after this?" — Ezra 9:6,10

To deliver sermons on each returning Lord's Day, to administer the Lord's Supper
statedly, to pay an occasional visit to those who request it, to attend religious meetings—this,
we fear, sums up the ministerial life of multitudes who are, by profession, overseers of the
flock of Christ. An incumbency of thirty, forty or fifty years often yields no more than this.
So many sermons, so many baptisms, so many sacraments, so many visits, so many
meetings of various kinds—these are all the pastoral annals, the parish records, the ALL
of a lifetime's ministry to many! Of souls that have been saved, such a record could make no
mention. Multitudes have perished under such a ministry; the judgment only will disclose
whether so much as one has been saved. There might be learning, but there was no
"tongue of the learned to speak a word in season to him that is weary." There might be
wisdom, but it certainly was not the wisdom that "winneth souls." There might even be the
sound of the gospel, but it seemed to contain no glad tidings at all; it was not sounded forth
from warm lips into startled ears as the message of eternal life, "the glorious gospel of the
blessed God." Men lived, and it was never

asked of them by their minister whether they were born again! Men sickened, sent for the
minister and received a prayer upon their death- beds as their passport into heaven. Men died,
and were buried where all their fathers had been laid; there was a prayer at their funeral and
decent respects to their remains; but their souls went up to the judgment seat unthought of,