The pastor, in a true and important sense, is entrusted with the care of the souls of his congregation; he is, therefore, under obligation to use his utmost power for their conversion and sanctification, “warning every man and teaching every man,” that he “may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus” (Col. i. 28). Paul said to the Ephesian elders: “Take heed to yourselves, and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost has made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which He has purchased with His own blood” (Acts xx. 28); and in exhorting the people on their part to obey the ministry, he urges as a reason, “for they watch for your souls as they that must give account” (Heb. xiii. 17). This responsibility plainly includes: 1. A personal life such that it may constitute a fitting example. The pastor is to be “an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Tim iv. 12). Thus, Paul ever referred to his own life, not as perfect, but as publicly exemplifying the Christian character, saying to the Philippians (Phil. iv. 9): “Those things which ye have both learned and received, and heard, and seen in me, do; and the God of peace shall be with you;” and to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. ii. 10), “Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe.” A defective, irregular life in the pastor neutralizes the ablest efforts in the pulpit and may become a pre-eminent means of the ruin of souls. 2. Wise and faithful dealing with the individual souls of his charge. Paul went “from house to house,” from soul to soul: he “ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears,” and he proposes [p. 152] this as an example of ministerial fidelity, requiring the pastor to be “instant in season, out of season.” Evidently, he did not regard the work of the minister as done when performed only in the study and the pulpit: it included personal dealing with souls. 3. Earnest effort to become an able minister of the New Testament. The most solemn urgencies press on the pastor the duty of seeking the highest possible intellectual and pulpit power. The themes he unfolds are the grandest that can engage the thought of man or angel. The end to be secured—the salvation of souls—is the most momentous ever committed to a finite being. God will not hold guiltless the indolent, reckless minister who causes the Gospel to be despised and imperils the souls of his people by a careless, unstudied presentation of the message He has entr............