4. Ministerial faithfulness includes our impartiality in all the
and all; welcome pained breasts, aching backs, and trembling legs; if we can by all but approve ourselves Christ's faithful servants, and hear that joyful voice from his mouth, 'Well done, good and faithful servants.'
4. Ministerial faithfulness includes our impartiality in all the administrations of Christ's house. He that is partial, cannot be faithful. O with what extraordinary solemnity doth Paul set on this exhortation upon Timothy! 'I charge thee before God, and the Lord
Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things, without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality,' 1
Tim. 5:21.
Brethren, you will shortly appear before an impartial God, see that ye be impartial stewards; take the same care, manifest the same love, attend with the same diligence, the poorest and weakest souls that are committed to your care, as you do the rich, the great, and honourable.
Remember all souls are rated at one value in your Master's book, and your Redeemer paid as much for the one as for the other. Civil differences must be civilly acknowledged, but these have no place in our spiritual administrations.
5. Lastly, Ministerial faithfulness includes constancy and stedfastness: Not a backsliding, or flinching servant, Rev. 2:10. 'Be thou faithful, (i.e. fixed and constant) to the death, and I will give thee a crown of life.' We look for happiness, as long as God is in heaven; and he expects constancy, as long as we are on earth.
Many of us have cause to bless the Lord, and greatly to rejoice in his goodness this day, who enabled us to be stedfast and unmoveable in the trials that have passed over us; and when the great earthquake