Things are not always to move on in their present embarrassed and tardy manner. Zion is not always to sit upon the ground and mourn in dust. The day of her redemption draweth nigh. Her prayer shall at length be heard, and God will come down for her deliverance. He will raise up hosts of faithful laborers to help us do this work. He will open wide and ripened fields for them to reap and garner. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings," shall yet be chanted in all the waste places of the earth. The watchmen shall lift up the voice together in triumphant song. "They shall see eye to eye." "The Lord shall make bare his holy arm, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of God." Then will be realized the vision of the revelator in the apocalypse. That mighty angel, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, shall take his great commission from the throne, commence his flight in the midst of heaven, and bend his way and bear his message to every nation and kindred and tongue and people. Zion shall become an eternal excellency, the joy of many generations. "Her sun shall no more go down, neither shall her moon withdraw itself, for the Lord shall be her everlasting light, and the days of her mourning shall be ended." Such shall be the eventual harvest of all our trials, hopes and tears. Our work is great in its objects—great in its difficulties, and great also in its promised results.

It is evident therefore,

1. That it makes great demands upon those engaged in it. It makes incessant demands upon the minister's time. Every hour is burthened with its duties. He must do every thing with dispatch. And after his best endeavors, he is constantly pained to see so much left undone that needs doing. This disciple will get ensnared, that sinner go to the judgment, before he can raise the salutary warning.

There is a perpetual demand upon his intellectual resources. No other man is called to speak two or three hours every week before the same auditory, and that too upon subjects in which there is no particular interest, and no man can do it year after year with credit to himself, and profit to his hearers without a vigorous, well replenished mind. The intellectual tax is enormous.

2. This work makes strong demands, also, upon the heart of a man. Here I cannot enlarge. I wish however to call attention, for a moment, to the constant draught made upon a minister's sympathies. It would be difficult to over-estimate it. In no other calling or profession, in no other walk of life can be found anything like it. He must weep with those that weep, and rejoice with those that rejoice. Few men understand the scope of such a demand. No matter what the state of his own private circumstances and feelings at the time, his heart must be a

perfect thermometer, rising and falling according to the state of the atmosphere around it. And so great and sudden are the changes. to which it is liable, that it must run up from the lowest to the highest point in the scale in the shortest space of time. The weeper and the rejoicer he often finds living side by side, and before he has had time to wipe away his tears, he must put on a smile. From the bedside of the dying believer, whom he has been attending down to the river of death, and pointing to the celestial visions beyond, till he scarcely knew whether he was in the body or out of it, he goes directly to the festivities of the nuptial ceremony, where he must sympathize as heartily with the living as he did there with the dying, and rejoice now over the consummation of a union, at the dissolution of which, in another case, he had just wept. Thus his sympathies are sometimes strongly excited in one way, sometimes, in another-now drawn out to a state of painful tension in this direction, now, in that. And every man who understands this species of discipline, knows it to be of the most exhausting character. The sympathies become so many avenues, through which the principle of life is imperceptibly drawn off from the heart. But I did not design to dwell on these minor points. Our work makes demands upon the spiritual man far more important than any which relate to his time, intellect or sympathies. Of these I wish briefly to speak.

3. It demands that he cultivate great expectations. He must not be faithless, but believing. He must have confidence in God and the power of his truth. When he takes that truth, and goes before the people with it, and urges its authority and claims in the simplicity and fervor of the gospel, he has a right to expect success. It may be immediate, it may be remote. The message may kill, it may make alive. One or the other it will do. A savour of life or of death it will become. It shall not return void. Men's hearts may be hard, but the word of God is a two-edged sword, piercing and dividing asunder even the flinty rock. We may be called to wrestle against principalities and powers, against spiritual wickedness in high places, the most formidable phalanx ever marshalled against the truth, but our weapons are mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds-we may attempt, and expect great things.

4. The demand for prayer in this work is also great and urgent. Whatever is done will be done in answer to prayer. The promise is, "According to your faith, be it unto you. Feeble, infrequent, formal prayer will not meet the demand. It must be earnest, fervent, persevering-mighty in faith-abundant in strong crying and tears-the offspring of a deep spiritual agony. The ministry needs to confide, with more childlike simplicity in the divine promises. If they pledge what is impossible with men, we are not to stagger at it, but believe, that with God all things are

possible. He can bring light out of darkness-make the parched ground a pool-give songs in the night-harvests in the desert and turn the shadow of death into eternal day. This needs to be seen and felt in order that the throne may be boldly approachedthe horns of the altar seized, and held fast till the heavens open, and pour down righteousness. Such a thing as the salvation of a world is not to be achieved without fervent, effectual prayer, travailings in spirit and groanings unutterable.

5. Again, the work demands great self-denial. Many are to run to and fro in the earth till knowledge is increased. Such will be called to lay themselves upon the altar, sacrifice worldly prospects and ease, forsake country and home, take their life in their hand, go far hence to the Gentiles and amidst burning sands or eternal frosts, toil and suffer and die.

And has the minister at home, no self denials to practise? Is his to be a life of indolence and self pleasing? Not unless the disciple is to be above his master, and the servant above his Lord. Not unless what we have said of the difficulties of his work be sheer delusion. The present aspect of things, especially, is prophetic of anything except ministerial quietude and ease. Multitudes are leagued together to destroy our influence and bring both our office and work into contempt. Multitudes more, professing respect and reverence for the office, have nevertheless many hard and bitter things to say against the men who fill it. In addition to this, and more ominous than all the rest, Zion languishes, the spirit is departed, the rain of righteousness is withheld and the enemy is abroad sowing tares with a liberality that never tires nor sleeps. Where the fault lies may not be so easily determined as some men imagine. It may be in the ministry, or in the Church, or, as is more probable, in both. In any event, it behoves us, brethren and fathers, to be vigilant and active. Such a day as this, is no time, to fold our hands and hold our peace. language of the prophet, God seems to be saying, "Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests, howl, ye ministers of the altarcome lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of God. Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of your God, and cry mightily unto the Lord." Whatever be the duty of others much is demanded of us. We need a more self-denying, Christ-honoring spirit to be crucified to the world and alive unto God-willing to bear reproaches, persecutions, bonds and death even, for the sake of Christ. Therefore,

In the

IV. It is evident that this work demands great and exclusive devotedness to God-in other words, a strong, vigorous piety. This is implied in what has already been said. If this work abounds in such difficulties and trials-calls for such hope, faith, prayer and self-sacrifices, evidently those who engage in it need to

be men of glowing and manly piety. Nothing else can meet the present and future emergencies of the cause. This alone can bear us up amid the labors and perils of the conflict, make us patient under injuries, steadfast in trial,courageous in danger and enduring to the end. Give us this, and we can stay ourselves upon God, be prevalent in prayer, and carry this work through to its completion. V. If such be the objects, difficulties, promise and demands of our work, the reason why we cannot come down from it, is obvious. No other work is so deserving our efforts, and so sure of a rich reward. No other work is so arduous and difficult, and so much needs our exertions. To every solicitation from the enemy, therefore, we send back promptly Nehemiah's noble reply, we cannot come down.

We cannot, as some others have done, abandon the work of the ministry altogether for a less difficult and more lucrative employment. Woe is us if we preach not the Gospel-we have been called of God, and solemnly set apart to this work. It is the work of our own, free choice. In a protracted course of preparation for it, we have spent the vigor of our youth, the hard earnings of industrious toil, and in the season of our seclusion, been, comparatively lost to the world. Though poor and feeble our best services, still they are needed in this work. We admit, that the burdens and trials it imposes, are in themselves, most painful and difficult to be borne. But we seek not here our rest. Our reward is on high, our crown at the end of the race. Others run for a corruptible, we for an incorruptible crown. Then tell us not of a more lucrative employment. It cannot be found. We shall yet shine as the brightness of the firmament and as the stars forever and ever. Why, then, should we come down?

Neither can we come down to labor with our hands for our own subsistence. Not that we regard it as disreputable,or,in any other respect, beneath us. But because it is not our work-the work to which we are called of God and voluntarily pledged. On the contrary, it is the work of our hearers. And if we leave our work to go down and do theirs,the unavoidable and disastrous result is, that ours must go undone, and the cause of Christ suffer. Besides, the laborer is worthy of his hire. They which minister about holy things, are to live of the things of the altar. If our hearers are made partakers of our spiritual things, their duty is to minister unto us in carnal things. For us, therefore, to leave our appointed work, urgent and pressing as it is, and come down to what God himself has made it the imperious duty of others to do, would be wrong, and we cannot do it.

But while we are decided on this point,we cannot, on the other hand, come down to the degrading business of teaching for hire. We protest against the principle of making the size of a salary the index to ministerial duty, of throwing ourselves, like mer

chandise, into the market to be struck off to the highest bidder. To every man who thinks to buy us in this way, we say emphatically "we seek not yours, but you." Your money, in our opinion is the least desirable and the least valuable part of you. We would rather be the instrument, in the hands of God, of saving your soul, than possess all your treasures. And we ask some share in your carnal things only, that we may labor more uninterruptedly and to better advantage for this great object. But we disclaim-as ministers we indignantly repudiate the idea of coming down from our exalted work, to barter for filthy lucre.

Nor can we come down from declaring the whole truth, to the exclusive urging of a few selected portions of it. This, at the present day is too often demanded of us. Some of our Churches bear

a strong family likeness to an ancient Church of which we have read, and the language of an apostle to that, with some slight variations, would not be inapplicable to them. When they come together every one of them hath a doctrine, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation, especially hath an enterprise, which in their view has peculiar claims to precedence and prominence in the ministrations of the sanctuary, and if we do not think so too, we are pitiably obtuse in our perceptions or shamefully recreant to the truth. Now while our solemn purpose is, not to shun to declare the whole counsel of God-while we mean to inculcate, in the proper place and proportion, all the great doctrines and duties of the gospel and expound the principles of action in all the social, civil and ecclesiastical relations of life-in a word, while we hope, by the grace of God, to keep ourselves pure from the blood of all men, we cannot give ourselves up to the exclusive advocacy of any one truth or cause, however important it may be. This would be coming down from the whole to a part of our duty-and whatever may be thought in some quarters, we cannot doubt that the great cause would suffer loss in the end. That a man who had never been up upon the walls of Jerusalem where he could survey the extended prospect, and get a full and clear view of the vastness and moral grandeur of our enterprise, should differ from us in his judgment on this point, is not so mysterious, but, how a man who understands the design, promise and demands of this work, has had his heart once interested in all its important objects, how such a man-a christian man, and above all a christian minister, can ask us to leave our moral elevation, and come down to a lower point of observation, and a lower standard of effort, is a question not easily solved. It must be that man, even in his best estate, has strong downward tendencies that in the moral, as in the natural world, it is easier coming down, than going up. Whatever the explanation, however, let every minister beware how he comes down from his watchtower. No matter who sends for him-nor who proposes an interview. The object usually is to get him down from his work. They