But His ministers, if they are indeed His ministers, will be clothed by Him with something even of His supreme authority.

'Conscience is an authority,' says one of the most authoritative preachers that ever lived.

'The Bible is an authority; such is the Church; such is antiquity; such are the words of the wise; such are hereditary lessons; such are ethical truths; such are historical memories; such are legal saws and state maxims; such are proverbs; such are sentiments, presages, and prepossessions.' Now, the well-equipped preacher will from time to time plant his pulpit on all those kinds of authority, as this kind is now pertinent and then that, and will, with such a variety and accumulation of authority, preach to his people.
Thomas Boston preached at a certain place with such pertinence and with such authority that it was complained of him by one of themselves that he 'terrified even the godly.' Let all our young preachers who would to old age continue to preach with interest, with pertinence, and with terrifying authority, among other things have by heart _The Memoirs of Thomas Boston_, 'that truly great divine.' 3.

A third thing, and, as some of the people who heard it said of it, the best thing about that sermon was that--'He did not only show us our sin, but he did visibly tremble before us under the sense of his own.' Now I know this to be a great difficulty with some young ministers who have got no help in it at the Divinity Hall.

Are they, they ask, to be themselves in the pulpit?
How far may they be themselves, and how far may they be not themselves?
How far are they to be seen to tremble before their people because of their own sins, and how far are they to bear themselves as if they had no sin?
Must they keep back the passions that are tearing their own hearts, and fill the forenoon with Euroclydon and other suchlike sea-winds?
How far are they to be all gown and bands in the pulpit, and how far sackcloth and ashes?
One half of their people are like Pascal in this, that they like to see and hear a man in his pulpit; but, then, the other half like only to see and hear a proper preacher.