An Adequate Ministry: A Sermon, Delivered Before the American Education Society, at the Anniversary Meeting in Boston, May 25, 1869 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

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Excerpt from An Adequate Ministry: A Sermon, Delivered Before the American Education Society, at the Anniversary Meeting in Boston, May 25, 1869

We can hardly fail to observe that the Apostle's words imply a distinction between faithfulness and ability. It is not enough that the men to whom this ministry is committed, be faithful men; they must be able to teach others also. They must first be faithful, or, more properly, worthy of confidence, and then they must be able or competent to the work of teaching, and therefore of defending the faith once delivered to the saints, so that others after them, through generations yet unborn, may keep up that only apostolical succession.

Without attempting any extended illustration of the thought represented by that phrase, faithful men, I may say that of course no man is worthy to be trusted with the ministry of the Gospel unless, in humble and penitent faith, he has received that Gospel into his own soul. How can any man be intrusted with the Gospel if he gives no evidence of having experienced its saving power? Nay, such evidence on that point as might suffice for his admission to communion in the church, is not sufficient for his admission to participate in the ministry of the Gospel. The only true idea of the man worthy to be thus intrusted, is the idea of one who can be readily recognized as a man of God, a man of prayer, a man diligent in the self-discipline of the Christian life, a man growing in grace and in that knowledge of Christ which comes from the experience of his power to save. Such are the faithful men, the men whose moral and spiritual qualities make them fit to be trusted with this ministry.

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