Thomas Murphy

This demands of the pastor most thorough consecration of heart and life. There is no other work so sacred, so momentous, so identified with the highest interests of the world, so dear to the heart of God. What, then, should those men be to whom this work has been entrusted?

God has called them, and sent them to speak to their fellow-men in his name. He has laid the obligation on them to take his messages as they are found written out in the Holy Oracles, and proclaim them aloud to the whole world. Their business is to lay open before men the very heart of the infinite Jehovah. They are to explain the communications which God sends, to deliver his instructions, his threatening, his promises, his warnings and his grand motives. To these things they are to awaken attention. They are to keep them before men, and to press them home with all the urgency that fellow-feeling and sympathy can arouse.

Ministers are the chief earthly instruments in the hands of God for saving their fellow-men. By preaching he has ordained that the gospel is to be brought home and applied. And this preaching he has made the great business of all his ministerial servants. Hence, in a most important sense, he has constituted them his agents for the rescuing of sinners from their lost estate. Though men themselves, they have been sent to grasp their fellow-men and hold them back from going down into the pit. They are appointed to go and stop the lost rushing rapidly on the way to perdition. The high commission has been given them to gather in souls, that they may be redeemed and treasured up for the blessed mansions of Jesus.

Coming, then, in the name of the Lord and delivering the message which he has put in their mouths, it cannot be but that their words shall have a most serious influence for weal or for woe upon those to whom they are delivered. This was felt by the apostle when, as a preacher, he exclaimed, “For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved and in them that perish; for to the one we are the savor of death unto death, and to the other the savor of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?” Is it any wonder that he should thus cry out, “And who is sufficient for these things?” Each proclamation of the gospel by the minister either leads souls toward life immortal or sends them downward toward a deeper hell. It softens hearts or it hardens them. It brings men upward toward Jesus, or it will justify God in consigning them to the regions of deepest woe. Is it not, then, an awful thing to preach? Who shall attempt to do it until his heart is bathed in the atmosphere and the blood of Calvary?

In a certain and most momentous sense ministers are appointed to be mediators between God and their perishing fellow-men. They are to plead with God that he would be reconciled with men. So pleaded that faithful minister the apostle Paul as he said, “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers.” The old prophetic obligation still rests upon them: “Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord!” Thus are they to stand before God on behalf of men. But they are especially to plead with men that they would be reconciled unto God. Perpetually their cry to the perishing is to be, “Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ; as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” Their awful position is that of standing between dying men and the living God, who is just, holy, and yet forgiving. With the one they are to plead the infinite merits of Christ; to the other they must point out the blood, the blood that cleanseth from all sins. Their messages are most solemn as coming from the lips of God. They are awfully solemn, since men must heed them or go down into everlasting burnings. Oh, how much they need the Holy Spirit every moment!

They are leaders in the great sacramental host. That host of the living God, blood-washed and called to the highest destiny, is increasing in numbers every day. It is gathering men from every clime, and is bound together by the most sacred of ties. The object before it is to rescue this world from the dominion of Satan and to crown Christ its King. This is the grand enterprise of the world, to which everything else must be subordinate and must contribute. There are in it posts of toil and responsibility for private Christians, but ministers are the heaven-ordained leaders. Christ is the Head, and from him come the authority and the power, but they are the responsible captains. What manner of men must they be? Theirs is the post of danger and responsibility, but it is the post of honor too. How blessed those who have grace to be faithful!

The work of the minister is the grandest and most important work in the world. The estimation in which God holds it God, before whom all the callings of men are open may be learned from the glowing words of the apostle: “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they believe without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent? As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things!” Thus does God regard it, and thus especially should it be looked upon by those who are placed in it. The following language in reference to it is not too strong: “What an office is that of the minister! The world cannot show such another work. It is the great, the greatest, in which a man can be engaged. Moses’s leading forth the tribes from Egypt, and Joshua’s conducting them into Canaan, sink into insignificance when compared with it. Time begins and time will end all other works in which a man can be engaged, but eternity alone is the boundary and endurance of this. All others are the works of man; this is pre-eminently the work of God. A never-dying God is his employer, never-dying souls his employ on them and in them to undo all that Satan and sin have effected, renew them after the image of Christ, and bring them back to God and his glory. To teach the philosophy of human redemption, the science of God’s great salvation, the stupendous plan of divine mercy, and to bring back the sinner from the brink of perdition to the paradise of heaven; to prophesy to the dry bones that they live; to open the eyes of the
blind, and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God; to quicken to a new life the dead in trespasses and in sins; to awaken the dreamy sleeper and to convert the sinner, this is the paramount design of the gospel ministry. To effect this, how absolutely necessary the presence of God!”

The more we reflect upon it the more we must feel that we have neither thoughts to imagine nor words to express its greatness. It is not possible for us to overestimate its importance or the importance of the deepest piety in those who are called to its sacred duties.

This solemn grandeur of his work should be kept before every pastor, younger or older, to animate him in a calling which has its many trials. It should ever be in his mind to make him faithful in duties from which the flesh naturally shrinks. He should never forget it, that it may especially be an ever-present motive to lead him to a most thorough consecration of his whole being to the cause of the Master.