Watching over a flock brings
to you none of the exhilaration of authority and influence, none of the
intoxication of publicity and applause. Your experiences are the quite
opposite of all these things when you are watching over your flock. Your
work among your flock is all done in distant and lonely places, on
hillsides, among woods and thickets, and in cloudy and dark days. You
spend your strength among sick and dying and wandering sheep, among
wolves and weasels, and what not, of that verminous kind. At the same
time, all good pastors are not so obscure and forgotten as all that. Some
exceptionally able and exceptionally devoted and self-forgetful men
manage to combine both extremes of a minister's duties and opportunities
in themselves. Our own Sir Henry Moncreiff was a pattern pastor. There
was no better pastor in Edinburgh in his day than dear Sir Henry was; and
yet, at the same time, everybody knows what an incomparable
ecclesiastical casuist Sir Henry was. Mr. Moody, again, is a great
preacher, preaching to tens of thousands of hearers at a time; but, at
the same time, Mr.
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