thou live unto God.' With many such words as these did Thomas teach the
saints of his day to stoop to their daily cross; a daily cross then,
which has now been for long to him and to them an everlasting crown.

3. And speaking of A Kempis, and having lately read some of his most
apposite chapters, such as that on the Holy Fathers and that on Obedience
and Subjection, leads me on to look at Loth-to-stoop when he enters the
sacred ministry, as he sometimes does. When a half-converted,
half-subdued, half-saved sinner gets himself called to the sacred
ministry his office will either greatly hasten on his salvation, or else
it will greatly hinder and endanger it. He will either stoop down every
day to deeper and ever deeper depths of humility, or he will tower up in
pride of office and in pride of heart past all hope of humility, and thus
of salvation. The holy ministry is a great nursing-house of pride as we
see in a long line of popes, and prelates, and priests, and other lords
over God's heritage. And our own Presbyterian polity, while it hands
down to us the simplicity, the unity, the brotherhood, and the humility
of the apostolic age, at the same time leaves plenty of temptation and
plenty of opportunity for the pride of the human heart. Our preaching
and pastoral office, when it is aright laid to our hearts, will always
make us the meekest and the humblest of men, even when we carry the most
magnificent of messages. But when our own hearts are not right the very
magnificence of our message, and the very authority of our Master, become
all so many subtle temptations to pride, pique, self-importance, and
lothness-to-stoop. With so much still to learn, how slow we ministers
are to stoop to learn! How still we stand, and even go back, when all
other men are going forward! How few of us have made the noble
resolution of Jonathan Edwards: 'Resolved,' he wrote, 'that, as old men
have seldom any advantage of new discoveries because these are beside a
way of thinking they have been long used to: resolved, therefore, if ever
I live to years, that I shall be impartial to hear the reasons of all
pretended discoveries, and to receive them, if rational how long soever I
have been used to another way of thinking.' Let all ministers, then,
young and old, resolve to stoop with Jonathan Edwards, who shines, in his
life and in his works, like the cherubim with knowledge, and burns like
the seraphim with love.

And then, whe