In so doing, my dear brother, thou shalt save thyself. Lose your inner life, and you lose yourself, sure enough; for that _is_ yourself. You will often have to tell your people that salvation is not the one act of conversion, nor the one act of passing through the gate of heaven at last; but the renewal, the sanctification, the growth, into large and symmetrical stature, of the whole character. Tell that to yourself often too. We take it for granted that you are a regenerated man, or we would not have ordained you to be a minister of the Gospel to-day. But it is possible for a man to be regenerate and to be a minister, and yet to remain very worldly, shallow, undeveloped and unsanctified. We who are your brethren in the ministry could tell sad histories in illustration of this out of our own inner life. We could tell you how, in keeping the vineyard of others, we have often neglected our own; and how now, at the end of years of ministerial activity and incessant toil, we turn round and look with dismay at our shallow characters, our unenriched minds, and our lack of spirituality and Christlikeness. O brother! take heed to thyself--save thyself! II. _Take heed to the Doctrine._--A very little experience of preaching will convince you that in relation to the truth which you have to minister week by week to your people you will have to sustain a double character--that of an interpreter of Scripture and that of a prophet. Let me first say something of the former. With whatever high-flown notions a man may begin his ministry, yet, if he is to stay for years in a place and keep up a fresh kind of preaching and build up a congregation, delivering such discourses as Scotchmen like to hear, he will find that he must heartily accept the _role_ of an interpreter of Scripture, and lean on the Bible as his great support. This is your work; the Book is put into your hands to-day, that you may unfold its contents to your people, conveying them into their minds by all possible avenues and applying them to all parts of their daily life. It is a grand task. I cannot help congratulating you on being ordained to the ministry to-day, for this above everything, that the Bible is henceforth to be continually in your hands; that the study of it is to be the work of your life; that you are to be continually sinking and bathing your mind in its truths; and that you are to have the pleasure of bringing forth what you have discovered in it to feed the minds of men. The ministerial profession is to be envied more for this than anything else. I promise you that, if you be true to it, this Book will become dearer to you every day; it will enrich every part of your nature; you will become more and more convinced that it is the Word of God and contains the only remedy for the woes of man.