With all its infirmity and all its inefficiency, what a truly heavenly power the pulpit is when it is filled by a man of God who gives his whole mind and heart, his whole time and thought to it, and to the pastorate that lies around it.

His mind may be small, and his heart may be full of corruption; his time may be full of manifold interruptions, and his best study may yield but a poor result; but if Heaven ever helps those who honestly help themselves, then that is certainly the case in the Christian ministry.

Let the choicest of our children, then, be sought out and consecrated to that service; let our most gifted and most gracious-minded sons be sent to where they shall be best prepared for the pulpit and the pastorate,--till by the blessing of her Head all the congregations and all the parishes, all the pulpits and all the lectureships in the Church, shall be one garden of the Lord.
And then we shall escape that last curse of a ministry such as John Bunyan saw all around him in the England of his day, and which, had he been alive in the England and Scotland of our day, he would have painted again in colours we have neither the boldness nor the skill to mix nor to put on the canvas.

But let all ministers put it every day to themselves to what descent and succession they belong.

Let those even who believe that they have within themselves the best seal and evidence attainable here that they have been ordained of Emmanuel, let them all the more look well every day and every Sabbath day how much of another master's doctrine and discipline, motives, and manners still mixes up with their best ministry.