Natural History of Enthusiasm

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1834 edition. Excerpt: ...the infection of infinite sorrow. And this is the law of success in the Christian ministry, that highest work of philanthropy. Every right-minded and heaven-commissioned minister of religion, is "baptized with the baptism wherewith his Lord was baptized." In an inferior, yet a real sense, he is, like his Lord, a vicarious person, and has freely undergone a suretyship for the immortal welfare of his fellow men. He has charged himself with a responsibility that can never be absolutely acquitted while any power of exertion or faculty of endurance is held back from the service. The interests which rest in his hand, and depend on his skill and fidelity--depend, as truly as if divine agency had no part in the issue--are as momentous as infinity can make them, nor are to be promoted without a willingness to do and to bear the utmost of which humanity is capable. Though the vicar of Christ be not unconditionally responsible for the happy result of his labours, he is clearly bound, both 03' the terms of his engagement and the very quality of the work, to surrender whatever he may possess, that has in it a virtue to purchase success; and he knows that, by the great law of the spiritual world, the suffering of substitutes enters into every procedure of redemption. He who " took our sorrows and bore our griefs," left, for the instruction of his servants, a perfect model of what should ordinarily be--a life of beneficence. Every circumstance of privation, of discouragement, of insult, of deadly hostility, which naturally fell in the way of a ministry like his, exercised among a people profligate, malignant and fanatical, was endured by him as submissively as if no extraordinary powers of relief or defence had been at his disposal. On the very same...