A Word in Season; a Series of Subjects Addressed to the Flock Committed to His Charge

Front Cover
General Books, 2013 - 44 pages
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1844 edition. Excerpt: ... office. From this is manifest the excessive evil of wandering from church to church--running after preachers called " popular"--requiring, in the exposition and enforcing of Christian doctrine and duty, the additional stimulus of intellectual novelties and far-fetched theories to render them palatable; whilst, at the same time, it becomes very questionable how far any man, who has received a pastor's ordinationand office, and has a flock to watch, is justified in breaking or weakening that bond, whenever, or for whatever cause, the morbid spiritual appetites, of what is called "the religious world," require to be so stimulated. No doubt " popular preachers" have a place and a work in Christ's Church. No doubt, also, there is always a class of Christian men who unhappily can only be reached by them; but it would be well that such preachers should be used distinctively from the pastor's office, and that their influence should be exerted, specially in instructing their hearers in their duty towards their own pastors, and restoring them to their care. This habit of wandering is productive of many evil consequences. It produces disorder in the Church-- it produces disorder in the spirits and minds of those who yield to it; and disorder in the Church is, as we all know, the fruitful parent of confusion, and that miserable family of strifes, divisions, and envyings, whose work is to break up states, and render all the social relations of life sources of suffering. One special part of the shepherd's office was to defend his flock from the assaults of robbers and of wild beasts; and the manners of the times and the countries in which the shepherds of the East lived prove this duty to have been then, as it still is, one of great danger. So we read...

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