HERALDS OF GOD
burden of his toil. Nothing could be further from his thoughts: for he is so piercingly aware that the uttermost of his devotion is a paltry, miserable return for what Christ has done for him. "If there is anything," exclaimed Rabbi Duncan, "in which I would be inclined to contradict my Lord, it would be if I heard Him say? "Well done, good and faithful servant.'"
II
This first mark of the herald of Christ leads on inevitably to the second. He will be a man of prayer. Here again, of course, it is necessary to guard against any suggestion of a double standard—as though the cultivation of the devotional life were a professional obligation limited to the few, and not the manifest duty of all. "A man of prayer"—that must be the ideal, not only of the ordained servants of the Gospel, but of everyone who bears the Christian name. All are here alike, for the New Testament knows nothing of a possession of the Spirit as a priestly monopoly, and the life of devotion is meant to be normal Christianity. The basic reason why a minister must pray is not because he is a minister (that would savour of official piety, always an odious thing), but because he is a poor, needy creature dependent on God's grace.
That is fundamental. But is it not also evident that the weight of his peculiar responsibility must drive him to his knees? If he is taking his work seriously at all, there will be days when Moses' hot outburst to the Lord will echo in his heart: "Wherefore layest Thou
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