up to church hungry for instruction and comfort and encouragement. Let
them look around and see the sin that sinks the ship of so many
ministers; and let them begin while yet their ship is in the yard and see
that she is fitted up and furnished, stored and stocked, so that she
shall in spite of sure storms and sunken rocks deliver her freight in the
appointed haven. When they are lying in bed of a Sabbath morning, let
them forecast the day when they shall have to give a strict account of
their eight years of golden opportunity among the churches, and the
classes, and the societies, and the libraries of our university seats.
Let them be able to name some great book, ay, more than one great book,
they mastered, for every year of their priceless and irredeemable student
life. Let them all their days have old treasure-houses that they filled
full with scholarship and with literature and with all that will minister
to a congregation's many desires and necessities, collected and kept
ready from their student days. 'Meditate upon these things; give thyself
wholly up to them, that thy profiting may appear unto all.'
4. And then with a sly stroke at us old ministers, our significant
author points out to us how much better furnished the Interpreter's House
was by the time Christiana and the boys visited it compared with that
early time when Christian was entertained in it. Our pilgrim got far
more in the Interpreter's House of delight and instruction than he could
carry out of it, but that did not tempt the Interpreter to sit down and
content himself with taking all his future pilgrims into the same room,
and showing them the same pictures, and repeating to them the same
explanations. No, for he reflected that each coming pilgrim would need
some new significant room to himself, and therefore, as soon as he got
one pilgrim off his hands, he straightway set about building and
furnishing new rooms, putting up new pictures, and replenishing his woods
and his waters with new beasts and birds and fishes. I am ashamed, he
said, that I had so little to show when I first opened my gates to
receive pilgrims, and I do not know why they came to me as they did. I
was only a beginner in these things when my first visitor came to my
gates. Let every long-settled, middle-aged, and even grey-headed
minister read the life of the Interpreter at this point and take courage
and have hope. Let it teach us all to break some new ground in the field
of divine truth with every new year. Let it teach us all to be students
all our days. Let us buy, somehow, the poorest and the oldest of us,
some new and first-rate book every year. Let us not indeed shut up
altogether our old rooms if they ever had anything significant in them,
but let us add now a new wing to our spiritual house, now a new picture
to its walls, and now a new herb to its gardens. 'Resolved,' wrote
Jonathan Edwards, 'that as old men have seldom any advantage of new
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account