John Erskine
Be thankful for a gospel ministry. Let the infidel and godless account it a burden, not a blessing to society, but you ought to admire the goodness of God in a provision so wisely calculated to promote your best interests. If it was not for public teaching, ignorance and vice would soon grow to so prodigious a height that not even the form of religion would remain.
Receive with becoming affection him who is this day ordained as your pastor. Consider the dignity of the office which is now his, and show him suitable respect. Ministers are men of God; they minister in His name and by His appointment.
See then that your pastor is with you without fear, because he works the work of the Lord. Esteem him highly in love for his work’s sake. Ministers would labour with better success if they lived more in the hearts of their people. Do not add therefore to your pastor’s difficulties by undutiful behaviour. Rather assist and strengthen him to bear up under them. Put the best construction on his words and actions that they can possibly bear. Curb disrespectful, intemperate zeal by reflecting on the Apostle’s direction: “Rebuke not an elder, but entreat him as a father”. Contempt cast on faithful ministers, and injuries done to them, Christ will resent as done to Himself.
Let your pastor therefore ever find you humble and teachable, swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. Do not come to church with a fault-finding, quarrelsome disposition. With what heart can ministers preach when hearers are eager to pick up something with which to find fault? Act a worthier part. Laying aside all malice and guile and hypocrisy and envying and evil-speaking, listen with meekness to that ingrafted Word, which is able to save your souls. Like the noble Bereans, receive the instructions of your teacher with all readiness of mind – not yielding them, however, an implicit faith, but searching the Scriptures daily, whether these things are so. Insofar as these instructions stand the test of that infallible touchstone, do not regard them as the word of man but, as they are in truth, the Word of the living God.
See that you do not reject Christ when, by His ministers, He speaks to you from heaven. When He calls, do not refuse; when he stretches forth His hand, do not disregard it. Be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving your own souls. While you have the light, walk in the light, lest darkness come upon you. It is only for a little time that ministers can be useful; before long, they must cease to preach, and you to hear. Those servants of God, who now show you the way of salvation, must after a while resign their places; and the eye that now sees them must see them no more. Comply then with their wholesome counsels while you enjoy them, lest you mourn at the last and say, “How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!”
Support the labours of your minister by private endeavours, suitable to your various positions, for the good of souls. Train up your children in the way that they should go, and encourage any serious impressions made on them. When discipline is exercised against open offenders, show that the honour of God, and the happiness of precious souls, lie nearer your hearts than the ease and reputation of any man. The efficacy of church censures will much depend on your conduct towards those who fall under them. Have no company with such, that they may be ashamed; and if they will not hear the church, let them be to you as heathen men and publicans.
And when you are allowed the nearest access to a throne of grace, and feel your hearts in the most devout and heavenly frame, wrestle and make supplication for your minister that his soul may prosper and be in health, and that the presence of God may accompany him in all his ministrations and that, when he plants and waters, God Himself may give the increase. May his doctrine drop as the rain and his speech distil as the dew. And may the soul of every one of you be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters fail not.
1An address to the congregation at the ordination of a minister. It is taken, with editing, from Discourses Preached on Several Occasions by Erskine (1721-1803), a minister of Old Greyfriars church, Edinburgh.