lection on the
same principles that the Prince of Mansoul patronised. Let them choose a
probationer who, young though he must be, has the making of a seer in
him. Let them listen for the future seer in his most stammering prayers.
Somewhere, even in one service, his conscience will make itself heard, if
he has a conscience. Rather remain ten years vacant than call a minister
who has no conscience. The parish minister of Mansoul sometimes seemed
to be all conscience, and it was this that made his head so full of
judgment, his tongue so full of a brave boldness, and his heart so full
of holy love. Your minister may be an anointed bishop, he may be a
gowned and hooded doctor, he may be a king's chaplain, he may be the
minister of the largest and the richest and the most learned parish in
the city, but, unless he strikes terror and pain into your conscience
every Sabbath, unless he makes you tremble every Sabbath under the eye
and the hand of God, he is no true minister to you. As Goodwin says, he
is a wooden cannon. As Leighton says, he is a mountebank for a minister.

(2) The second lesson is to all those who are politically enfranchised,
and who hold a vote for a member of Parliament. Now, crowds of
candidates and their canvassers will before long be at your door
besieging it and begging you for your vote for or against an Established
church. Well, before Parliament is dissolved, and the canvass commences,
look you well into your own heart and ask yourself whether or no the
Church of Christ has yet been established there. Ask if Jesus Christ,
the Head of the Church, has yet set up His throne there, in your heart.
Ask your conscience if His laws are recognised and obeyed there. Ask
also if His blood has been sprinkled there, and since when. And, if not,
then it needs no seer to tell you what sacrilege, what profanity it is
for you to touch the ark of God: to speak, or to vote, or to lift a
finger either for or against any church whatsoever. Intrude your wilful
ignorance and your wicked passions anywhere else. March up boldly and
vote defiantly on questions of State that you never read a sober line
about, and are as ignorant about as you are of Hebrew; but beware of
touching by a thousand miles the things for which the Son of God laid
down His life. Thrust yourself in, if you must, anywhere else, but do
not thrust yourself and your brutish stupidity and your fiendish tempers
into the things of the house of G