THE PREACHER'S INNER LIFE
unless he is aiming at these things he has no right to be in the ministry at all), if success in this deep sense is granted, he will not seek to depreciate it or ignore it, for that would be dangerously like the sin against the Holy Ghost: but equally he will not take to himself one grain of credit for it, for it is the doing of the Lord alone. It is only God who can take the five loaves and the two fishes-our paltry, scanty offering-and make it a banquet for the hungry souls of men. Moreover preaching (as we saw in a previous lecture) is essentially worship, and in worship all human glorying is excluded, for the God whom we adore fills the whole horizon, and our mood is that of prostrate Abraham: "Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes." Spurgeon in one place describes the clergyman who says, "When I was preaching at such-and-such a place, fifteen persons came into the vestry at the close of the service, and thanked me for the sermon I had preached." And Spurgeon, unable to restrain himself, lets fly furiously at the complacent creature: "You and your blessed sermon be hanged! Take not to yourself the honour which belongeth unto God only."
All we can do is nothing worth, unless God blesses the deed;
Vainly we hope for the harvest-tide, till God gives life to the seed.
Here, in the knowledge that the human agent is nothing—vox et praeterea nihil—is the final source of the preacher's humility of heart. He will rejoice whenever another soul, through his ministry, stumbles upon
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