Let the pastor, then, seek most of all to be faithful to Christ and His work. Let it be to him "a very small thing" that he "be judged" "of man's judgment" (1 Cor. iv. 4) and let him ever cherish as of chief moment a clear conscience, finding his highest comfort in the sweet assurance of God's approval. Be it his to have "respect unto the recompense of the reward," and so endure "as seeing him who is invisible" (Heb. xi. 26, 27). Thus, will his life approximate that grandest of merely human lives--the life of him who declared, "As we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the Gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God which trieth our hearts" (1 Thess. ii. 4), and at the close of which it was said, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day" (2 Tim. iv. 7, 8). When of old, at the Sea of Galilee, the Lord reinstated Peter after his fall, He thrice with solemn emphasis proposed the question, "Simon, son of Jonas, LOVEST thou ME?" He thus taught for all the ages that personal love to Him is the primal condition for the sacred office. Without this as the central, fontal principle in the soul the pastor's life will fail of spiritual power, but with this as its impulsive force he will be like the faithful minister seen by Bunyan's pilgrim: he "had eyes lifted up to heaven, the best of books in his hand, the law of truth was written upon his lips, the world was behind his back; he stood as if he pleaded with men, and a crown of gold did hang over his head." +Transcriber's Notes.+