think myself will not the worse of
it.'

2. The preaching of that Fast-day was with great authority also. 'There
was such power and authority in that sermon,' reports one who was
present, 'that the like had seldom been seen or heard.' Authority also
was one of the well-remembered marks of our Lord's preaching. And no
wonder, considering who He was. But His ministers, if they are indeed
His ministers, will be clothed by Him with something even of His supreme
authority. 'Conscience is an authority,' says one of the most
authoritative preachers that ever lived. 'The Bible is an authority;
such is the Church; such is antiquity; such are the words of the wise;
such are hereditary lessons; such are ethical truths; such are historical
memories; such are legal saws and state maxims; such are proverbs; such
are sentiments, presages, and prepossessions.' Now, the well-equipped
preacher will from time to time plant his pulpit on all those kinds of
authority, as this kind is now pertinent and then that, and will, with
such a variety and accumulation of authority, preach to his people.
Thomas Boston preached at a certain place with such pertinence and with
such authority that it was complained of him by one of themselves that he
'terrified even the godly.' Let all our young preachers who would to old
age continue to preach with interest, with pertinence, and with
terrifying authority, among other things have by heart _The Memoirs of
Thomas Boston_, 'that truly great divine.'

3. A third thing, and, as some of the people who heard it said of it,
the best thing about that sermon was that--'He did not only show us our
sin, but he did visibly tremble before us under the sense of his own.'
Now I know this to be a great difficulty with some young ministers who
have got no help in it at the Divinity Hall. Are they, they ask, to be
themselves in the pulpit? How far may they be themselves, and how far
may they be not themselves? How far are they to be seen to tremble
before their people because of their own sins, and how far are they to
bear themselves as if they had no sin? Must they keep back the passions
that are tearing their own hearts, and fill the forenoon with Euroclydon
and other suchlike sea-winds? How far are they to be all gown and bands
in the pulpit, and how far sackcloth and ashes? One half of their people
are like Pascal in this, that they like to see and hear a man in his
pulpit; but, then, the other half l