For I am as sure as I am of anything connected with a
minister's life, that a minister's own soul will prosper largely in the
measure that the souls of his people prosper through his pastoral work.
No preaching, even if it were as good preaching as the apostle's itself,
can be left to make up for the neglect of pastoral visitation and
personal intercourse. 'I taught you from house to house,' says Paul
himself, when he was resigning the charge of the church of Ephesus into
the hands of the elders of Ephesus. What would we ministers not give for
a descriptive report of an afternoon's house-to-house visitation by the
Apostle Paul! Now in a workshop, now at a sickbed, now with a Greek, now
with a Jew, and, in every case, not discussing politics and cursing the
weather, not living his holidays over again and hearing of all the
approaching marriages, but testifying to all men in his own incomparably
winning and commanding way repentance toward God and faith toward the
Lord Jesus Christ. We city ministers call out and complain that we have
no time to visit our people in their own houses; but that is all
subterfuge.
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