II. The Shadows of Ministerial Life. 1. Among these I may place our limited success in leading men to Christ. I have spoken of the joy which we find when success in this form attends our work, and all that I have said is true. But there is another side. It is a well-known fact that the intenser the light the darker is the shadow cast by it. In like manner, the greater the joy of leading men to Christ, the greater is the grief when we fail, or seem to fail, in this. And how few, comparatively, we lead to Christ out of the many who hear us from year to year! In spite of all we can do, men turn away from Christ the light and go off into the "blackness of darkness." "Who hath believed our report"? is a question which some of us often ask with tearful eyes, and aching hearts, and in tones of deepest despondency. Some will say, perhaps, that this is our own fault. They do say it. They say if we were more fervent, or more faithful, or more simple, or more prayerful, the occasion for this question would not exist. Perhaps this is a partial explanation of a part of our failure. I do not wish to say that it is not. God forbid that I should say a word that would in any measure weaken our sense of responsibility. I would rather be dumb than utter a word which should have that mischievous effect. If we were all that we should be, if we did all that we could do, and if we did it in the wisest and most winsome way possible to us, we should be more successful probably than we are. And it is our duty to examine ourselves keenly and carefully on this point. But this short and easy method of accounting for our comparative failure in this part of our work is not perfectly satisfactory. It is often, indeed, outrageously unjust and pitilessly cruel. Did not prophets complain of this same thing? Did not apostles bewail this? Does not God, again and again, utter this complaint in the Old Testament? Did not Jesus Christ weep bitterly over His failure in this very particular? Were prophets and apostles lacking in zeal? Were God and His Son deficient in fervour, in tenderness, in wisdom, in fidelity? Who dares say, yea to such questions? And yet they all lamented that in spite of what they wished and worked to accomplish, men went their way to doom. But be the true explanation what it may, there is the fact. And if I can speak for others from what I feel myself, that is one of the deepest shadows in our life. At times the thought of it brings me positive anguish. Occasionally such a sense of utter impotence and uselessness seizes me that I am ready to abandon my work in sheer despair. There are seasons too, when from this cause my faith in the Gospel as a means of enlightening and saving the world, suffers a complete eclipse. Fortu nately, like a lunar or solar eclipse, it is but brief. The shadow passes from the face of the Sun of Righteousness, and I stand again rejoicing in the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. I do not know how far my experience harmonises with that of others; but such it is, even if it is peculiar to myself, and my brethren must think of it just what they will. I hardly think, however, from the tone of some of the prayers which I heard this morning, that in this I stand quite alone. There are others who stand with me in this shadow. In this shadow, too, we stand with Him who, on Olivet, wept over the city which first rejected His words and then took away His life. 2. Another shadow in ministerial life is caused by the inactivity of so many able men in our Churches. It is profoundly saddening to look over our congregations and see the number of men and women who are able to work for Christ, but are doing nothing. Some of the most educated and A few are personally active wealthy in our Churches are the least useful. it is true, but the greater part do nothing. thing. And why? Because they give something. But there is a fundamental error in this thinking. Paul, in one of his epistles, uses the words, "I will gladly spend and be spent for you." These people can say the first, but not the second. They will spend with some approach to apostolic cheerfulness, but they will not be spent. They will give money but not manhood. They will pay for other people's working, but they wont work themselves. With all their education they do not understand the Gospel of work. In the religious world they are mere consumers. They do not produce, to use the words of Carlyle, "the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a product." I have been reading a remarkable book lately, entitled "Natural Law in the Spiritual World." There are two chapters in it bearing the titles, "Semi-Parasitism," and "Parasitism." It would be well for each of us, not merely to read this book ourselves, but to put it into the hands of these capable indolents in our Churches, and request that they would deeply study these two chapters. If, after that, they did not change, their case is utterly hopeless. But this indolent, parasitic life marks not only some of the wealthy and best educated in our Churches, but many besides. There is work to be done, but it cannot be done because these capable but indolent Christians will let their talent rust, or rot, rather than use it in helpful service. This is a permanent and deep shadow in our life as ministers of Jesus Christ, anxious to further His kingdom. 3. The want of cordial interest in one another which marks our churches is another shadow in our life. According to the New Testament associated Christians are brethren; they constitute one family; they are "members one of another." It is very delightful to study this picture of Christians in the New Testament. But when we turn away from the book and look at the churches, we know what a contrast between the Scripture representation and the reality! I do not now refer to the unseemly contentions which create confusion and chaos in our churches, shatter public confidence in them, and cripple the usefulness of faithful and earnest ministers for many a weary year. I refer rather to the indifference to one another which characterises associated Christians. "Am I my brother's keeper?" expresses the pervading spirit in not a few places. The rich and educated stand aloof in proud isolation from the poor and uncultured. Those who have not been "introduced," as it is called, feel bound by the rigid rules of conventional etiquette not to speak to one another, forgetting that the relation into which they are brought by a common union with Christ creates a law to which this merely conventional regulation should be subordinate, and before which it should give way. How rare is it for the sick and the sad to be visited by any other person than the pastor! No man seems to care for them except the man whose visits cannot be altogether regarded as prompted by personal interest, but dictated in part by a sense of official duty. I suppose we have all heard complaints from those who in times of sickness and sorrow were neglected by their fellow church members. Equally frequent, and occasionally somewhat bitter, have been the complaints from persons, humble in station, who consider themselves to be slighted by those above them in the social scale. Perhaps those who complain thus are not wholly free from fault. They may be indifferent to others, as others are to them. The poor, too, sometimes draw off from the rich, if the rich sometimes proudly stand aloof from the poor. But even admitting this, there can be no doubt that there is a lamentable lack of interest in one another on the part of the members of our churches who say, "One is our Master, even Christ, and all we are brethren." This destroys much of the value of church life, it seriously weakens the influence and attractiveness of the church to those outside, and greatly hinders the usefulness of the minister and the progress of the kingdom of Christ. "That they may be perfect in one, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me." So Christ prays. The world's faith in the Divine commission of Jesus depends in part it would seem upon the love and harmony of Christians. If so, how much of the unbelief of the world is traceable to the coldness or the con tentiousness of those who are professedly anxious to bring it to faith in Christ. "Am I 4. Another shadow in our life is caused by our fidelity. become your enemy because I tell you the truth?" asks Paul of the Corinthians. They plainly thought him such, though their truest and tenderest friend. The same question often leaps to our lips; for men become hostile to us because we speak the truth. Sometimes this may arise, not from the truth we speak, but from our way of speaking it. There is a want of wisdom and winsomeness in us. The pungency and pugnacity of our speech excite antagonism and bitterness. But this is not always the explanation. The truth we speak cuts directly across the lines of men's loves and lives. It disturbs their complacency. It is like caustic to the flesh. It carries condemnation into their hearts. When this is the case one of two things will happen: either they will be grieved for their sin, or they will be indignant with the man through whose utterance the sense of it has been created; they will either seek to harmonise their lives with the truth, or they will hate the man who forces home upon them the discordance between the two. It would be easy to avoid all this. We might do it by always speaking "comfortably to Jerusalem," as though men needed only a ministry of consolation; by discussing truth in the abstract, and never pointing out the practical applications of it; by depriving our deliverances of point and power through a skilful use of circumlocutory and euphemistic speech. But we must not do this. Prophets did not; apostles did not; Christ did not; and we dare not. Hence we must take the consequences of our fidelity, even if it is, as in Christ's case, crucifixion. There are many other shadows besides these, but we have not time even to name them. But however many they may be, the lights exceed them. We have more, far more to be grateful for than to complain over; more occasion to sing than sigh, to laugh than to mourn. Our evils, as we misname them, may be many, but our blessings are "a great multitude which no man can number"; though it would do us good sometimes if we would attempt the impossible,-count the innumerable. I would close by reminding you, brethren, and myself, of one more shadow, a genial, protective, abiding shadow, what the Scriptures call the "shadow of God's wings." In that shadow let us make our refuge until all calamities be overpast. STREET. JOHN TAYLOR. HOME MISSIONS IN SOUTH WALES. THE following paper was read at the Annual Meeting held at Llandilo in the spring of this year. Some friends who heard it read subsequently to that meeting, urged the writer to send it to the Homilist; partly, because that serial is read by many in Wales, and, partly, because of the historic associations which it recalls as related to Free Christianity, and to some of its renowned preachers of this century in South Wales. HOME MISSION WORK IN SOUTH WALES. Our records of memorable events, embracing everything that is common to us as a nation, and more particularly the religious events of our country, are full of interest to us. We read them and think of them in our quiet hours. They are sometimes depressing, and even humiliating; but they are oftener refreshing, invigorating, and inspiring. History is a bracing study. Our minds, long ago, without the companionship of history, would have become very empty, dwarfed, quite unfit for the work of our own day. Contemporaneous history is doubly interesting and instructive. We consider this morning, not the "days of old and the years of ancient times," but our own time -at any rate, times so very near to us that we may call them our own. In this charming district of our own beloved Cambria, a locality which is associated with the names of one or two of the richest and sweetest poetical writers in the English tongue, we are assembled this morning in solemn, earnest, and loving conference to receive and to give, to exchange thoughts and to suggest plans which all relate to the kingdom of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in our own native land. We feel that we can sing with all our hearts the words of that venerable, eloquent, learned, and devoted servant of God, Dr. W. L. Alexander, of Edinburgh— "We meet to seek in faith and zeal, The brethren's good, the Church's weal: May Zion's King be near at hand." A passing reference to Llandilo and its neighbourhood may be excused on the ground of historic associations. Golden Grove is wedded to the name of Jeremy Taylor; and his "Marriage Ring," composed there, will live in the esteem of pure and refined minds as long as the world stands. The |