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tian that you cannot fail to make a right estimate of your own life and
character in contrast with those of the great Exemplar. You will then
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see your own weakness, your ignorance, your love of ease, and your
unwillingness to deny self.
You have but just begun the study of God’s Holy Word. You have
picked up some gems of truth, which, with much toil and many prayers,
have been dug up by others; but the Bible is full of them; make that
Book your earnest study and the rule of your life. Your danger will
ever be in despising counsel and in placing a higher value on yourself
than God places upon you. There are many who are always ready to
flatter and praise a minister who can talk. A young minister is ever in
danger of being petted and applauded to his own injury, while at the
same time he may be deficient in the essentials which God requires of
everyone who professes to be a mouthpiece for Him. You have merely
entered the school of Christ. The fitting up for your work is a life
business, a daily, laborious, hand-to-hand struggle with established
habits, inclinations, and hereditary tendencies. It requires a constant,
earnest, and vigilant effort to watch and control self, to keep Jesus
prominent and self out of sight.
It is necessary for you to watch for the weak points in your charac-
ter, to restrain wrong tendencies, and to strengthen and develop noble
faculties that have not been properly exercised. The world will never
know the work secretly going on between the soul and God, nor the
inward bitterness of spirit, the self-loathing, and the constant efforts to
control self; but many of the world will be able to appreciate the result
of these efforts. They will see Christ revealed in your daily life. You
will be a living epistle, known and read of all men, and will possess a
symmetrical character, nobly developed.
“Learn of Me,” said Christ; “for I am meek and lowly in heart: and
ye shall find rest unto your souls.” He will instruct those who come
to Him for knowledge. There are multitudes of false teachers in the
world. The apostle declares that in the last days men will “heap to
themselves teachers, having itching ears,” because they desire to hear
smooth things. Against these Christ has warned us: “Beware of false
prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they
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are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.” The class of
religious teachers here described profess to be Christians. They have
the form of godliness and appear to be laboring for the good of souls,