The Ministry

Men whose calling and work is to study the Scripture, or the things revealed therein , and to preach them to others , cannot but have many thoughts about spiritual things , and yet may be ,and oftentimes are , most remote from being spiritually minded . They may be forced by their work and calling to think of them early and late , evening and morning , yet their minds be no way rendered or proved spiritual thereby .....And the reasons of it are manifest . It requires as much if not more watchfulness, more care , more humility , for a minister to be spiritually minded in the discharge of his calling , than for any other sort of men in theirs .....because the commonness of the exercise of such thoughts , with their design upon others in their expression , will take off their power and efficacy. And he will have little benefit by his own ministry who endeavours not in the first place an experience in his own heart of the power of the truths which he teaches to others . John Owen