by Horatius Bonar

We have been carnal and unspiritual. The tone of our life has been low and

earthly. Associating too much and too intimately with the world, we have in a

great measure become accustomed to its ways. Hence our spiritual tastes have

been vitiated, our consciences blunted, and that sensitive tenderness of feeling

has worn off and given place to an amount of callousness of which we once, in

fresher days, believed ourselves incapable.

We have been selfish. We have shrunk from toil, difficulty and endurance. We

have counted only our lives, and our temporal ease and comfort dear unto us.

We have sought to please ourselves. We have been worldly and covetous. We

have not presented ourselves unto God as "living sacrifices," laying ourselves,

our lives, our substance, our time, our strength, our faculties, our all, upon

His altar. We seem altogether to have lost sight of this self sacrificing principle

on which even as Christians, but much more as ministers, we are called upon

to act. We have had little idea of anything like sacrifice at all. Up to the point

where a sacrifice was demanded, we may have been willing to go, but there we

stood; counting it unnecessary, perhaps calling it imprudent and unadvised, to

proceed further. Yet ought not the life of every Christian, especially of every

minister, to be a life of self sacrifice and self denial throughout, even as was

the life of Him who "pleased not himself"?

We have been slothful. We have been sparing of our toil. We have not

endured hardship as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. We have not sought to

gather up the fragments of our time, that not a moment might be thrown idly

or unprofitably away. Precious hours and days have been wasted in sloth, in

idle company, in pleasure, in idle or worthless reading, that might have been

devoted to the closet, the study, the pulpit or the meeting! Indolence, self

indulgence, fickleness, flesh pleasing, have eaten like a canker into our

ministry, arresting the blessing and marring our success. We have manifested

but little of the unwearied, self denying love with which, as shepherds, we

ought to have watched over the flocks committed to our care. We have fed

ourselves, and not the flock. We have dealt deceitfully with God, whose

servants we profess to be.

We have been cold. Even when diligent, how little warmth and glow! The

whole soul is not poured into the duty, and hence it wears too often the

repulsive air of 'routine' and 'form'. We do not speak and act like men in

earnest. Our words are feeble, even when sound and true; our looks are

careless, even when our words are weighty; and our tones betray the apathy

which both words and looks disguise. Love is lacking, deep love, love strong as

death, love such as made Jeremiah weep in secret places. In preaching and

visiting, in counseling and reproving, what formality, what coldness, how little