An All Around Ministry - C. H. Spurgeon (continued)
honored of God in public, is quite a stranger to that chastening behind the door which keeps proud flesh from being unduly exalted.
How often have I prayed, "Dismiss me not Your service, Lord!" For a dismissed steward is a pitiable object among his lord's servants. He was once great and mighty, riding the high horse; but when he is out of a place, he is of less account than the smallest cowboy. See how glad he is to be received, as a grateful guest, into the humble cottages of those who once looked up to him with a sort of awe when he represented his lordship! Take heed that you be not exalted above measure, lest you come to nothing.
2. A steward is a servant of a peculiar kind, for he has to superintend the other servants, and that is a difficult thing to do. An old friend of mine, who is now with God, once said, "I have always been a shepherd. Forty years I was a shepherd of sheep, and another forty years I was a shepherd of men, and the last flock was a deal more sheepish than the first." This witness is true. I think I have heard that a sheep has as many diseases as there are days in the year; but I am sure that the other sort of sheep are liable to ten times as many. A pastor's work is an anxious one. All sorts of difficulties occur with our fellow-servants; and, alas! unwise stewards make a great many more than there need be by expecting perfection in others, although they do not possess it themselves. Our fellow-servants are, after all, wisely selected; for He who put them into His household knew what He was doing; at any rate, they are His choice, and not ours. It is not our place to find fault with our Lord's own election. It is very common with some to revile the Church; but as the Church is the bride of Christ, it is rather dangerous work to criticize the Lord's beloved. I feel towards the Church somewhat as David felt towards
Saul; I dare not lift up my hand against the Lord's anointed. Better far will it be for us to find fault with ourselves rather than with our people, when there is anything wrong with them.
Still, our church-members are men, and the best of men are but men at the best: to direct, instruct, console, and aid so many different minds, is no easy task. He who rules among men, for God, should be a man; and what is more, he should be a man of God. He should be graciously endowed, a kingly man, head and shoulders above his fellows. Men will gladly yield to real superiority, but not to official pretensions. The superior position must be supported by superior attainments. The steward must know more than the ploughman and the thatcher. He must be of higher intelligence than the gamekeeper and the carter, and he should have a more reliable character than Mary and John, who have to take orders from him.
Brethren, as stewards, we must have abundant grace, or we shall not fulfill the duties of our office, or earn to ourselves a good degree.
The other servants will take their cue from us. A steward, who is dull, inert, and slow, will have a slow team of servants about him, and the business of his lordship will fare badly. Those who travel must have noticed that the servants in a hotel are very much like the landlord; if the landlord is cheery, attentive, and obliging, all the maids and waiters partake of his geniality; but if he looks sourly at you, and treats you with indifference, you will find that the whole establishment is of a disdainful order. A minister soon gets round him people like himself: "like priest, like people." Oh, that we may always be alive and earnest in the service of the Lord Jesus, that our people may be alive also! I have read of a Puritan divine, that he was so full of life that his people said he lived like one who fed on live things. Oh, for a life sustained by living bread!
We shall not be good stewards in the management of our fellowservants unless we are ourselves filled with the grace of God. We must set our fellow-servants an example of' zeal and tenderness, constancy, hopefulness, energy, and obedience. We must ourselves practice constant self-denial, and select as our own part of the work that which is hardest and most humiliating. We are to rise above our fellows by superior self-forgetfulness. Be it ours to lead the forlorn hopes, and to bear the heaviest burdens. Archdeacon Have was giving a lecture at Trinity College when a cry of "Fire!" was raised.
His pupils rushed away, and formed themselves into a line to pass buckets of water from the river to the burning building. The tutor saw a consumptive student standing up to his waist in the water, and cried to him, "What! you in the water, Sterling?" The reply was, "Somebody must be in it, and why not I as well as another?" Let us say to ourselves, "Some fellows must be doing the drudgery of the