: fications are necessary: "fulness of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and of judgment and of might." Our blessed Lord, before giving a commission to his Apostles and their successors to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature under heaven, did first assure them, as the ground of their ability and confidence, that "all power was given to him in heaven and on earth;" and "therefore," said he, "go; and, lo, I am with you alway, unto the end of the world" (Matt. xxviii. 18, 19). And before they went forth to execute their commission, he commanded them to remain in Jerusalem until they should receive power from on high (Acts i. 4, 8): which having received on the day of Pentecost, they went forth in the strength thereof, and preached salvation from the wrath to come; in the spirit, not of fear, but " of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." Power in the Holy Spirit, which the Prophet Micah declareth himself to have been possessed of, is that with which every minister of the word under the Holy Ghost ought to be endowed and in the consciousness of having received that gift he asks for licence to preach the Gospel; and in the fulness of that power he goes forth to preach it. One who, out of a feigned humility, will not assert his commission to be from the Holy Ghost, and his word to be in the power of the Holy Ghost, doth merely declare that he hath no right to stand in that holy office; that he deceived the church when he professed to have received the call of the Holy Ghost; or, if he was then truly in the Spirit of power, that he hath lost it since, and is either become apostate, or for a season come under obscurity and hiding. But as to the notion, now gone abroad, that it is an evil and a blasphemous thing for a minister of the Gospel to speak in the name of the Holy Ghost, it is a false and ruinous notion, subverting the office of the ministry altogether, denying to the Holy Ghost his appointed ordinance, and leaving both ministers and people to the misleading of their own understanding and of worldly prudence. To this meanness, poverty, and degeneracy of the ministerial calling; to this refusal to assert our own standing, as the ambassadors of God, speaking in the Spirit the things of Christ; it is due, more than to all things besides, that this age is wholly given up to human wisdom, man's understanding, expediency, and common sense; and doth decry, as enthusiasm, and presumption, and blasphemy, every attempt to assert for the Holy Ghost a living organ of thought, speech, and action. Foolish and wicked men! ye know not whither you drive ;-downright infidelity, absolute atheism, the deity of human reason, the abrogation of any and every Divine right in prince or prophet, father or husband, governor or master; the desecrating of every ordinance into a shell and slough; the bringing in of the reign of common sense, as opposed to the Holy Ghost. Who are foremost in this God-dethroning career? Those ministers of the Gospel who say, We have no commission, we have no authority to speak in the Holy Ghost: we are but educated men, studious men, essayists, lecturers, preachers, or what you please to call us; but any Divine commission we are not vain enough, any Divine authority we are not blasphemous enough, to claim. This is the worst of all. This power of the Holy Ghost, in which the prophets of the Old and the ministers of the New Testament are sent forth, is guided by "judgment" and endowed with " might." Judgment is the power of discriminating between the good and the evil; strength is the power to declare and utter it in the face of all opposition, and terror, and death itself: the one respecting the conscience which discerneth truth, the other respecting the evil and gainsaying world in which it is uttered. There is no proceeding a step in the knowledge of God without the former; and without the latter there is no proceeding a step in his obedience. The Spirit of God anointeth the eye-balls of the conscience, and openeth to us the objects of the moral world in those aspects and bearings which they have in God's own sight: we know the evil to be evil, and the good to be good; we know the false to be false, and the true to be true: and without this knowledge how shall we commend the one or rebuke the other? Now I ask, Ought not every Christian minister, ought not every Christian man, to possess this unction from the Holy One, by which he knoweth all things, which is true and is no lie, and with which no lie can in any way intermingle? This is judgment: not the passive observation of the evil and the good, the critical acumen to know the one from the other; but the active abhorrence, the eager avoidance of the evil, the fervent admiration and the earnest pursuit of the good. Judgment, in the sense of the Scriptures, is the detestation of wickedness and the love of goodness. This strong principle of righteousness at all times-not the faculty of finding out the means for some end, but the discernment at once both of the right end and of the right means;this spirit of a sound mind; this "wisdom from above, which is first pure, and then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and of good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy;" this Holy Spirit of Truth, is what in the Scripture is signified by judgment: and not there only, but among men also; for what is a judge, but he into whose hand is committed the high duty of discerning righteousness through all the mists of prejudice and the disguises of self-interest with which it is obscured in the eyes of ordinary men, and the sacred trust of administering justice and equity to all classes and orders of men; whose communion with invisible things, whose introspection with the eye of conscience, whose occupation with the secret and inward fountains of truth, should be such, as that he is thought, when seated on the tribunal, to have no need of his outward eye, over which, in their symbolical figures of Justice, they are wont to draw a blind? But, besides this faculty of discerning between the good and the evil, there is another needful to the vocation of a prophet, which is, boldness and daring to utter it: "Add to your faith virtue," or manhood. Without this, knowledge and faith degenerate into selfish devoteeship or confused mysticism. Boldness to declare, openness to confess, firmness to destroy and root out evil, is, next to the discernment of it, most necessary to a man and a Christian, and, above all, to a minister of truth and righteousness; who is set for the very end of exposing iniquity by the light of his example and his precept especially of his precept. Our calling is to shew the power of word before effect, the power of faith before experience. It is an error, and a most deadly one, that a minister should only declare iniquity and righteousness according to his experience of the one and his attainment of the other. He is not the measure; God is the measure: he is not the example; Christ is the example. He is not the community, but one person of it, who should study the whole, and know the righteousness and iniquity of the whole for why, then, take himself as the measure? He is not the church, but the voice of it, by which all the members confess their sins and crave forgiveness: for why, then, make himself the only member? Mock humility, betrayal of trust, ignorance of our office, is this maxim of regulating our message by our experience, instead of listening to the Spirit of God, and delivering the whole counsel of the word of God. A minister, indeed, by his own personal character may be prevented from enjoying the knowledge of the truth: if he would be delivered from this short-coming, it is not by hiding or shortening, but by declaring what he does know; by being faithful over the least, that he may be made faithful over the greatest. Such are the qualifications for the prophetical calling, to which all ministers of the Gospel are called; and such are the abuses to which it is liable. I have spoken as a dying and responsible man should speak; as a minister of the church of Christ, and a lover of his country, and a promoter of the commonweal of men; who feels what issues temporal and eternal, not of myself and my family and my flock, but of thousands and of millions of men, depend upon the declaration of the truth in these and in all times. We of this generation have a work for this generation to do: we seek not, we think not of, posthumous fame, of renown amongst men, of long life in the breath of men; we have a better life, and a higher renown, and a more enduring name, after the honours of which we are in pursuit, when we cry upon the ministers of the word to shake themselves from their sleep; to turn to the word of God, and consider their vocation as it hath been exercised since the days of Enoch; to remember into what as men they are baptized, even the reception of the Holy Ghost; to remember by what as ministers they professed to have been called, even by the call of the Holy Ghost; and to feel for that Holy Ghost; and to open their ear and hear his voice; to open their lips, and testify the things of Christ; to fulfil his office, which is to reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come." This office of the Comforter surely we are called upon to discharge; and if we do not faithfully fulfil this office of rebuke and threatening, how shall men flee to the hope set before them in the Gospel? To close all: If I sought for a description of the Christian ministry as I believe it to be in this land, I would take Isaiah the prophet's, in these words: "His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand: they all look to their own way, every one for his gain from his quarter" (Isai. lvi. 10, 11). And next, what such governors and watchmen bring upon a country, let our prophet declare. "Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity" (Mic. iii. 9.) The Prophet, having declared himself to be filled with power from the Spirit of God, both to judge and to utter judgments, calls upon the heads of the house of Jacob, and the princes of the house of Israel, who abhorred judgment and perverted equity, to give him ear, and hear their impeachment of the Lord. He again names them by their honourable names, as heads of the house and leaders of the people, who by their example and their precept should have guided the people with wisdom, and purged out from amongst them all the evil doers; being eyes to observe, and horns to destroy the wickedness of the wicked. But, instead of this, they abhorred judgment and perverted all equity; being the seducers of the people into iniquity by their example and their influence, and the oppressors of those who were of too high and upright a mind to follow their base and erroneous courses. And when they sat in judgment, they perverted it; morality was gone out of their government and their religion: their hands were full of blood; and God would not hear their prayers, or accept their offerings. This God will not in any wise endure. He will have mercy before sacrifice, and righteousness he loveth more than the fat of rams. Hear what he saith to them by the mouth of Isaiah; to priests, and prophets, and rulers: "Bring no more vain oblations incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Isai. i. 13-17.) A religion, a government, without morality, is most odious in the sight of God; a religion, a government, without morality, professing to be administered in the name of the most holy God and of his Christ, he will not endure. He calls those into whose hands he had entrusted the keeping of his flock, the princes, the prophets, and the priests, and by the mouth of Micah tells them their guilt, and the consequences of it. This is the indictment. : : "Ye build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money; yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us.' Of the wickedness of the rulers we have already made sufficient discourse: covetousness, gain in some form or another, is the grand offence for money they would condemn, and for money they would acquit; for money they would fill the priest's office, and for gain the prophet's. And wherefore this devotedness to money? Because money purchaseth all things visible, is that for which every thing worldly and sensual can be obtained wherefore the love of it is pronounced by the Apostle to be the root of all evil; because such a ruling passion indicates a spirit bowed down to the earth, and bent upon the indulgence of the flesh. Much important matter presseth us, and we cannot go about to point out the perilousness of the times in which we live, on account of this same devotedness to gain; not in the merchant or trader, whose vocation it is to enrich himself and his country, but in the heads of the state and of the church, whom the industrious classes, or rather the community, have separated and set apart from the pursuit of gain, to the higher duty of intending the interests of the spiritual world, and maintaining justice and religion in the land. The officers of the state and of the church are not paid by hire and reward: we are not hirelings; we are not paid men to speak of paying a priesthood or a magistracy, is to desecrate their high callings. We are maintained in our places for the interests of righteousness and religion; to which being called of God, we devote ourselves of a willing mind; not for filthy lucre, nor as |