fe in your
ministry. Let life be your commission, your well-spring and treasury on
all such occasions; else, you well know, there can be no begetting to
God: since nothing can quicken or make people alive to God, but the life
of God; and it must be a ministry in and from life, that enlivens any
people to God. We have seen the fruit of all other ministries, by the
few that are turned from the evil of their ways. It is not our parts, or
memory, the repetition of former openings, in our own will and time, that
will do God's work. A dry doctrinal ministry, however sound in words,
can reach but the ears, and is but a dream at the best. There is another
soundness that is soundest of all, viz. Christ the power of God. This is
the key of David, that opens, and none shuts; and shuts and none can
open: as the oil to the lamp, and the soul to the body, so is that to the
best of words: which made Christ to say, "My words, they are Spirit, and
they are life;" that is, they are from life, and therefore they make you
alive, that receive them. If the disciples that had lived with Jesus,
were to stay at Jerusalem till they received it; much more must we wait
to receive before we minister, if we will turn people from darkness to
light, and from satan's power to God.

I fervently bow my knees to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that you may always be like-minded; that you may ever wait reverently for
the coming and opening of the word of life, and attend upon it in your
ministry and service, that you may serve God in his Spirit. And be it
little, or be it much, it is well; for much is not too much, and the
least is enough, if from the motion of God's Spirit; and without it,
verily, never so little is too much, because to no profit.

For it is the Spirit of the Lord immediately, or through the ministry of
his servants, that teacheth his people to profit; and to be sure, so far
as we take him along with us in our services, so far we are profitable,
and no further. For if it be the Lord that must work all things in us
for our salvation, much more is it the Lord that must work in us for the
conversion of others. If therefore it was once a cross to us to speak,
though the Lord required it at our hands, let it never be so to be
silent, when he does not.

It is one of the most dreadful sayings in the book of God, "That he that
adds to the words of the prophecy of this book, God will add to him the
plagues written in this