Without this self-renunciation and self-devotion to Christ, as an habitual fact, the inner life will be without spiritual power. Jesus, in His promise of the Holy Spirit and of the Christ-presence, makes this the one, essential condition: "If ye love Me, keep My commandments, and I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter" (John xiv. 15, 16). A true consecration of self to Christ, therefore, assures the presence of the Holy Spirit as the revealer of Christ within the soul. This was the habitual attitude of the apostle Paul. He says: "The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Gal. ii. 20). Self was nothing, Christ everything; for when confronted with peril of death, he said: "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God" (Acts xx. 24). Thus self-dedicated, he received the promise: The Spirit wrought in him mightily, filling him with Divine life and power. So utter was his self-abnegation, and so all-absorbing his love of souls, that, like Moses of old (Ex. xxxii. 32), he "could wish," were it right and would it secure their salvation, to be himself "accursed from Christ" for them (Rom. ix. 3). With like self-devotion to souls, Rutherford, the eminent Scotch minister, while assuring his flock that they "were the objects of his tears, care, fear, and daily prayers," said "My witness is above, that your heaven would be two heavens to me, and the salvation of you all as two salvations to me." A ministry thus self-forgetting is of necessity a ministry of power; for God Himself works in it, as all history has shown. IV. AN HABITUAL LOOKING ABOVE FOR THE REWARD.--"Godliness" has "promise of the life that now is" (1 Tim. iv. 8); and nowhere, perhaps, is that promise more fully realized than in the pastorate in the present age. In social relations, in opportunities for culture, in friendships formed, in means of influence, in popular estimation, and even in temporal support, few positions in life have higher advantages or more agreeable surroundings. But, with all this, life, even in a faithful ministry, is, on its earthly side, rarely other than a disappointment; and the pastor who seeks reward in human applause or in any form of earthly hope, not only thereby excludes the Holy Spirit from his life but is also sure to find unrest and failure as the ultimate result. The rewards of the faithful pastor are from God and are of special magnitude and blessedness.