It is not to His ministers only that our Lord says, Take
up My yoke and learn of Me. The daily cross is not the opportunity of
ministers only. It is not to ministers only that tribulation worketh
patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. It was to all
who had obtained like precious faith with their ministers that Peter
issued this exhortation that they were to give all diligence to add to
their faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance,
and to temperance patience,--and so on. Now, my brethren, unless all
that is on foot in yourselves, as well as in your ministers, then their
progress in Christian experience will only every new Sabbath-day separate
you and your ministers further and further away from one another. When a
minister is really making progress himself in the life of religion that
progress must come out, and ought to come out, both in his preaching and
in his prayers. And, then, two results of all that will immediately
begin to manifest themselves among his people. Some of his people will
visibly, and still more will invisibly, make corresponding progress with
their minister; while some others, alas! will fall off in interest, in
understanding, and in sympathy till at last they drop off from his
ministry altogether.
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