April 4

For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. - 1 Corinthians 2:2.

CHRIST is all and in all in the gospel ministry. He is the grand theme. If we turn to the first preachers of the gospel, we shall find each of them saying, with the inspired apostle, “We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord.” If they would persuade men by the terrors of the Lord, they were his terrors; if they spake of the wrath of the Almighty, it was the great day of his wrath. “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little.” Did they speak of the divine perfections? they made them shine forth in the face of Jesus Christ. Did they speak of providence? they placed the reins of universal empire in his hand, and made him “Head over all things, to his church which is his body.” Did they speak of heaven? they made it to consist in seeing his glory,-in seeing him as he is, and in “being forever with the Lord.” Did they speak of repentance? they never thought of fetching this water out of the millstone of man’s natural heart; they knew that the tear of penitence could only drop from the eye of faith, in sight of the cross; as it is written, “They shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son, and they shall be in bitterness as one that is in bitterness for his first-born.” If they called upon persons to pray, it was to ask in his name. “Yea,” said they, “whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.”

The difference between an evangelical and a legal preacher is not that the one enforces holiness and good works, and the other not; but the difference is, the one makes them the source of our salvation, the other as evidences; the one lays them as the foundation, the other employs them only as the superstructure. Both admonish, both exhort, their hearers; but here is the difference:-the one waters his dead plants, the other waters living ones, and they produce “the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ to the praise and glory of God.”