1.J 02. Love, the Central Power of the Ministry

Love, the Central Power of the Ministry.

You will find all the way through the letters of the Apostle Paul how much he relied upon the inspiration of love, how much it was the working power of his ministry. It seems to me that this is the distinctive quality that ought to belong to every Christian minister. It is the underlying force by which all his special faculties should be inspired. Where this exists in great power, it will give a peculiar colour and quality to every attribute of the mind. Even the most formal acts of reasoning will have a certain glow imparted to them. The sharpest discriminations made by conscience, the requisitions of the most fastidious taste, the impulses of fear, the stress of indignation and of anger itself, will all receive a tone and quality from love which will make them doubly powerful and doubly beneficent. I do not believe that any other temper than that of love will carry a minister through his whole work with so little wear and tear, with so much inward satisfaction. Indeed, it is the element by which he interprets at once God and man. It is only when we put ourselves, according to the measure of our power, into the same relations towards man that God sustains, that we are susceptible of intuitions of divine mercy and pity, or can form any conception of how- the amazing power of God may act benefi cently, through the atmosphere of divine love, to wards things mean, selfish, and hateful. There is only one pass-key that will open every door, and that is the golden key of love. You can touch every side of the human heart and its every want; that is, if you can touch it at all; and if you have the power to bestow anything, love gives facility of access, the power of drawing near to men, the power of enriching thought, of weakening their hungry desires and appetites, the power to thaw out the winter of their souls and to prepare the soil for the seed and growth of the better life. A minister who has pure intellection only to offer to his people is like one who would in winter drag a plough over the frozen ground. He marks it, but he does not furrow it. He who has to make the seed of truth grow in living men into living forms must have power to bring summer to men’s hearts, light and heat; and then culture, whether it be by the plough or the harrow, by the hoe or the spade, will do some good. It is this summer-power of love, first, middle, and last, that every teacher and Christian preacher ought to seek. It is this that you ought to seek in the closet, in meditation, and in intercourse one with another. You must have a heart so alive and full of genial, sympathizing love that you feel yourself related to everything on the globe that lives and has the power of enjoyment. How this noble conception has been felt by the old minis ters of New England! No man can read the writings of Jonathan Edwards, of Hopkins, and others of that school, without seeing how they were filled with this sense of doing for others, and the desire to confer blessings upon universal sentient being. Their system was, in many respects, very imperfect, but, after all, the ideal was in their mind. They had a true conception of the all-pervading power of love in the hearts of men, which ought to be the very centre, out of which the whole ministry is to grow.