Trait 16.
TRAIT 16.
His particular love to the faithful.
THE universal love of the true minister manifests itself in a particular manner, according to the different situations of those who are the objects of it. When he finds the whole conduct of professing Christians conformable to the nature of their sacred profession, “he loves them with a pure heart fervently,” 1 Peter 1:22, and giving way to the effusions of holy joy, he expresses his affection in words like these: “Brethren, we are comforted over you in all our affliction and distress by your faith: for now we live if ye stand fast in the Lord.” And “what thanks can we render to God for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before God,” 1 Thessalonians 3:7, 9. In these expressions of St. Paul an astonishing degree of affection is discovered. “Now we live;” as though he had said, We have a two-fold life, the principal life which we receive immediately from Christ, and an accessary life, which we derive from his members through the medium of brotherly love. And so deeply are we interested in the concerns of our brethren, that we are sensibly affected by the variations they experience in their spiritual state, through the power of that Christian sympathy which we are unable to describe. Thus when sin has detached any of our brethren from Christ, and separated them from the body of the faithful, we are penetrated with the most sincere distress: and, on the contrary, whenever they become more affectionately connected with us, and more intimately united to Christ our common head, our spirits are then sensibly refreshed and invigorated with new degrees of life and joy. Reader, dost thou understand this language? Hast thou felt the power of this Christian sympathy? Or has thy faith never yet produced these genuine sentiments of brotherly love? Then thou hast spoken as a person equally destitute of sensibility and truth, whenever thou hast dared to say, “I believe in the communion of saints.”
TRAIT 17.
His love to those whose faith was wavering.
WHEN a minister, after having been made instrumental in the conversion of sinners, perceives their faith decreasing, and their love growing cold, he feels for them what the Redeemer felt when he wept over Jerusalem. Not less concerned for the remissness of his believing hearers, than St. Paul was distressed by the instability of his Galatian and Corinthian converts, he pleads with them in the same affectionate terms: “Ye know,” ye who are the seals of my ministry, “how I preached the Gospel unto you at the first. And ye despised me not, but received me as an angel of God. Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? For I bear you record, that if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes and have given them to me. Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth? My little children, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in you,” I tell you with sorrow, that after all my confidence in you, “I stand in doubt of you,” Galatians 4:13-20. “Our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged. Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels. Now for a recompense in the same (I speak as unto my children) be ye also enlarged. Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? or what part hath he that believeth, with an infidel? Wherefore, come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. We beseech you, therefore, brethren, that ye receive not the grace of God in vain,” 2 Corinthians 6:1, 11-18.
This language of the Christian pastor is almost unintelligible to the minister who is merely of man’s appointing. Having never converted a single soul to Christ, he has neither spiritual son nor daughter, and is entirely unacquainted with that painful travail which is mentioned by St. Paul. His bowels are straitened toward Christ and his members, and having closely united himself to the men of the world, he considers the assembly of the faithful as a company of ignorant enthusiasts. But, notwithstanding the spiritual insensibility of these ill-instructed teachers, who never studied in the school of Christ, there is no other token by which either sincere Christians or true ministers can be discerned, except that fervent love which the Galatians entertained for St. Paul before their falling away, and which that apostle ever continued to entertain for them. “By this,” saith our Lord, “shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another,” John 13:35.