HERALDS OF GOD
to fight for social justice and the Christian ethic in the wider community, to carry upon your heart the sorrows and shames and sins of the souls committed to your care, to be amongst them as a witness and a herald, "to present" (as Paul put it) "every man perfect in Christ Jesus"—could you conceive any task more humbling in its appalling responsibility? There is a great sermon of John Donne's, delivered in the year 1624, in which he sets forth his conception of the awful burden on the preacher's heart. "What Sea," cries Donne, "could furnish mine eyes with teares enough to poure out, if I should think, that of all this congregation, which lookes me in the face now, I should not meet one at the Resurrection, at the right hand of God! When at any midnight I hear a bell toll from this steeple, must not I say to my selfe, what have I done at any time for the instructing or rectifying of that man's Conscience, who lieth there now ready to deliver up his own account and my account to Almighty God?" Is it to be wondered at that many a man of God besides Elijah and Jeremiah has tried to run away from a commission so crushing and intolerable? Nothing but the grace of God can hold you to it. The magnitude of the task is the first element in evangelical humility.
The second is the unworthiness of the preacher. Who are we to expound categorically the mysteries of God and the soul? Our best insights are so fragmentary, our ignorance so abysmal. Never forget that in your congregation there will be those who had been
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