J W Alexander
To sustain a gospel minister in such labours, something is necessary beyond habitual diligence or mere professional zeal. There may be great stir and bustle, and activity, and yet no gospel efficiency. What we need is a spring of holy influence always within us, gushing out like a river-head of living waters. What shall secure this? Answer: the grace of God in the heart, working holiness and devotion . . . O that every pastor could say to the people whom he serves, or has served: “Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily, and justly, and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe”.
Paul could say so, for he followed Christ; and Christ was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners”. After a certain tour of preaching and healing, we are told, “Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee . . . and He taught in the synagogues, being glorified of all”. The indwelling Spirit was in the head, as in the members, a Spirit of grace and supplication, and frequent are the incidental but pathetic notices of our Lord’s retreats for private devotion. By these, Olivet and Gethsemane were signalised, long before His final agony. Here He “rejoiced in spirit”, here He doubtless groaned and wept, here He cried, “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight”.
How often did He, after days of weariness, spend the nights in solitary watching and prayer! While the storm was on the lake, Jesus, having dismissed an immense audience, was gone “up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, He was there alone”. When the fame of Him increased, “He withdrew Himself into the wilderness and prayed”. The seven-
1The two final points from an article, “The Lord Jesus Christ the Example of the Minister”, reprinted from Princeton and the Work of the Christian Ministry, vol 2.
teenth chapter of John is a blessed fragment of His intercessions. In the garden He prayed in agony: He was sorrowful, sore amazed, very heavy, yet He prayed “with strong crying and tears”. And in that very hour of darkness He exhorts us, “Watch and pray”! On this point we need say no more.
Finally, let us detain the reader only to hint at our Redeemer’s self-denial. Christ died upon the cross, but His whole foregoing life was a life of cross-bearing, “for ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich”. We are not called to expiatory sufferings, and we are forbidden to attempt neglecting of the body in the sense of meritorious penance. But hear the declaration to all believers, and pre-eminently to ministers: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me”.
When tempted to indolent self-pleasing – the bane of ministerial fidelity – let them remember that “even Christ pleased not Himself”. If the unpleasantness, the shame, the toil, the pain, the danger of any duty, is sufficient to keep them from its performance, they are therein practically renouncing the yoke of Him who has said, “He that loveth his life shall lose it”. It is, or ought to be, understood that every step of ministerial life is against the course of this world. Is it not enough for preachers to be as their master? “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?” And every minister has reason to suspect himself when any day occurs in which no tide of opposition, mental or external, is opposed: for he who floats with the current floats away from God.