The spontaneous sympathies of human nature, when they are vigorous enough to produce the fruits of charity, rest on an expectation of an opposite kind; for we first seek to dispel from our own bosoms the uneasy sensation of pity; then look for the gratitude of the wretch we have solaced, and for the approbation of spectators; and then take a sweet after-draught of self-complacency. But the Christian virtue of beneficence stands altogether on another ground; and its doctrine is this, that whoever would remedy misery must himself suffer; and that the pains of the vicarious benefactor are generally to bear proportion to the extent or malignity of the evils he labors to remove: so that, while the philanthropist who undertakes the cure only of the transient ills of the present life, may encounter no greater amount of toils or discouragements than are amply recompensed by the immediate gratifications of successful benevolence, he who, with a due sense of the greatness of the enterprise, devotes himself to the removal of the moral wretchedness in which human nature is involved, will find that the sad quality of these deeper woes is in a manner reflected back upon himself; and that to touch the substantial miseries of degenerate man is to come within the infection of infinite sorrow. And this is the law of success in the Christian ministry—that highest work of philanthropy. Every right-minded and heaven-commissioned minister of religion is "baptized with the baptism wherewith his Lord was baptized." In an inferior, yet a real sense, he is, like his Lord, a vicarious person, and has freely undergone a suretyship for the immortal welfare of his fellow-men. He has charged himself with a responsibility that can never be absolutely acquitted while any power of exertion or faculty of endurance is held back from the service. The interests which rest in his hand, and depend on his skill and fidelity—depend, as truly as if divine agency had no part in the issue—are as momentous as infinity can make them; nor are they to be promoted without a willingness to do and to bear the utmost of which humanity is capable. Although the servant of Christ be not unconditionally responsible for the happy result of his labors, he is clearly bound, both by the terms of his engagement and the very quality of the work, to surrender whatever he may possess that has in it a virtue to purchase success; and he knows that, by the great law of the spiritual world, the suffering of a substitute enters into the procedures of redemption.