offensiveness, hot-headedness, self-seeking,
self-pleasing vanity, now puffed up over one man, now cast down and full
of gloom over another, what self-flattery here, and what resentment and
retaliation there; and so on, as only his own eyes and his Divine
Master's eye can read between every diary line. What shame will cover
that minister as with a mantle when he thinks what the Christian ministry
might be made, and then takes home to himself what he has made it! Let
any minister shut himself in with his communion-roll and his visiting-
book before each returning communion season, and there will be one worthy
communicant at least in the congregation: one who will have little
appetite all that week for any other food but the broken Body and the
shed Blood of his Redeemer. But these are professional matters that the
outside world has nothing to do with and would not understand. Only, let
all young men who would have evangelical humility absolutely secured and
sealed to them,--let them come and be ministers. Just as all young men
who would have any satisfaction in life, any sense of work well done and
worthy of reward, any taste of a goal attained and an old age earned, let
them take to anything in all this world but the evangelical pulpit and
its accompanying pastorate.

5. But humility is not a grace of the pulpit and the pastorate only. It
is not those who are separated by the Holy Ghost to study the word of God
and their own hearts all their life long only, who are called to put on
humility. All men are called to that grace. There is no acceptance with
God for any man without that grace. There is no approach to God for any
man without it. All salvation begins and ends in it. Would you, then,
fain possess it? Would you, then, fain attain to it? Then let there be
no mystery and no mistake made about it. Would any man here fain get
down to that deep valley where God's saints walk in the sweet shade and
lie down in green pastures? Well, I warrant him that just before him,
and already under his eye, there is a flight of steps cut in the hill,
which steps, if he will take them, will, step after step, take him also
down to that bottom. The whole face of this steep and slippery world is
sculptured deep with such submissive steps. Indeed, when a man's eyes
are once turned down to that valley, there is nothing to be seen anywhere
in all this world but downward steps. Look whichever way you will, there
gleams ou