The minister, who would be most like the Master, must go and, like Him, lay the warm, kindly hand on the leper, the diseased, the wretched. He must touch the blind eyes with something from himself. The tears must be in his own eyes over the dead who are to be raised to spiritual life, Jesus is our great exemplar.
That pastor effects the most in the end who comes into closest personal contact with his charge. No amount of organizing, no skill in creating machinery and manipulating "committees" is a substitute for this. Who feels the power of a tear in the eye of a committee?
I find on inquiring among successful pastors, successful in the sense of winning men to Christ in profession, that they depend largely on personal contact.
As preachers we are to promote Christian culture, by bringing the dead branches to the living Vine, that, grafted into it, without a rag of human righteousness between, the life of Him may enter them; and by keeping them, as far as teaching and example can do it, abiding in Him, that they may bring forth fruit.
Every discourse of a true minister has an influence for good or evil, and that for eternity. Every word tells for the everlasting rise or fall, weal or woe, life or death, of souls. In every sentence we touch chords that shall send their vibrations through the endless future; that shall peal in the thunder of a guilty conscience, or resound in the music of a purified spirit.
