Feeding

 the living family have to be FED.

We have remarked that there is a growth of the members of the mystical body of Christ, and that to conduce to and promote this growth is to edify or build up the body of Christ. As in the natural, so in the spiritual body, this growth much depends on the nature and quality of the food supplied to it. Let the food given to the natural body be thin, watery, deficient in those peculiar elements of nutrition which supply the continual wasting of the bodily tissues, and in consequence, will be emaciation of the whole frame. This is especially the case in childhood and youth, when the growth of the whole body and of its various members is going on, and the future man or woman is being built up. The difference at that period of life between scanty, insufficient, unnutritious food, and an ample supply of sound, wholesome, nourishing diet is a matter of illness or health, debility or vigor, and, in their consequences, of death and life.

So in the building up of the mystical body of Christ, the difference between a thin and watery, unnutritious ministry and one full of sound, solid, wholesome, nourishing food is immense. The word of God speaks of "milk" and "strong meat"—milk for babes, (Heb. 5:14; 1 Pet. 2:2,) and strong meat for men. (1 Cor. 3:2.) Both these kinds of diet contain the largest portion of the elements of nutrition, and severally suit the digestive organs of infancy and manhood. Such, then, should be the ministry of the gospel, milk and meat; not London milk, weak and watery, but good, rich, new country milk, as it comes from the cow, full of cream and cheese, and meat sound and healthy, well bred and well fed; not Whitechapel beef, snatched by the butcher's knife from pleuro-pneumonia or the cattle plague. We do not want eloquence in the pulpit, but we do want food. Jael brought forth her milk and butter "in a lordly dish," for she was feeding the proud lord and master of 900 chariots of iron; but we can well dispense with "the lordly dish," if the bowl at one end of the table be filled with good milk for the babes, and the dish at the other, where the men sit, has on it a sound and juicy joint. But London milk in a porcelain bowl will starve the babe, and Whitechapel meat in a china dish will poison the man. Do we not love to see our children grow up stout and strong? But they need for this good food, and a good supply of it. O brother ministers, do you think sometimes about the food that you supply the children of God with? Has it nourished, is it nourishing your own soul? Can you say of what you preach, "These truths have fed, and do still feed my soul? Christ, his Person, his work, his blood, his righteousness, his dying love, his beauty, blessedness, and suitability; his mercy, pity, and compassion; what I have seen, felt, and known of him in his presence and power, as all my salvation and all my desire; this is all my life, all my hope, and all my happiness. I must, therefore, speak well of his name, exalt him to the utmost of my power, and commend him to every poor sensible sinner who is pining after him as the child after the bosom, or the starving man for food. 'Honey and milk are under his tongue; his flesh is food indeed, and his blood is drink indeed.' And having drunk his milk and wine, and eaten his meat, I can speak well of them both, and never wish to set any other provision before the dear family of God." This is the preaching which God will own and bless; and though it may be despised by the great bulk of professors, it will be prized by the poor and needy, hungering and thirsting children of God.

3. Another thing desirable, if not absolutely necessary, to edify the body of Christ is a suitable and seasonable VARIETY in the food supplied. The natural body requires for its due nourishment variety of food. The constituent elements of what is eaten remain the same, or it would not be nutritious; but, without some degree of variety, food, after a time, becomes rather loathed than loved. Our poor soldiers, under that red tape system which ties men up like a lawyer's brief, when not on foreign service, had boiled beef served to them at their mess day by day until their very stomachs loathed the sight and smell. The children of Israel ate quail in the wilderness until the meat came out of their nostrils and became loathsome unto them. (Num. 11:20.)

Should there not be some corresponding variety in the ministry of the word? What a variety there is in the Bible! Take the whole range from Genesis to Revelation. How consistent, how uniform in doctrine, but how varied in detail. It is thus uniform in conception, but multiform in expression. Without unity of thought there would be confusion, if not contradiction; without variety of expression there would be not only a wearisome sameness, but a deficiency of instruction. The amazing variety of the Bible is not only charming, as ever presenting some new feature of heavenly truth, but most instructive and edifying. So in the approved works of our most esteemed Christian writers, such as Bunyan, Owen, Huntington—what a fullness of abounding variety. Should not the ministry have a good measure of this? The food that it supplies may be varied, and yet be good food still. Milk can be given to children in more ways than one; meat for men need not be always mutton, and least of all the same piece and the same exact mode of cooking. So in the ministry of the word, there may be, and should be, variety—not a variety of truth but a variety in truth.

Prayer is a part of the ministry; but how wearisome to hear the same prayer over and over and over again. We condemn forms of prayer; yet how does the same prayer repeated again and again differ from a mere printed form? The chief value of extemporaneous prayer is that it enables the minister to pour forth his whole soul before God, as the blessed Spirit helps his infirmities and gives him utterance. He thus, as mouth for his gracious hearers, expresses the desires of their souls, and they can silently and sweetly unite with him as he presents his own and their mutual supplications before the throne. But when they know beforehand almost every word of his prayer; when there is no enlargement of heart and mouth, no entering into the numerous and varied needs, feelings, exercises, and desires of their souls, his prayer becomes at length but a wearisome, burdensome, unprofitable formula—words, and nothing but words. And as this is true of the prayer, so is it true and more than true of the preaching. We want no novelty in doctrine or experience; we are well satisfied with the good old beaten way. We want no startling, still less no sensational preaching. We want no juggler with his cup and balls to astonish our weak minds with the wonderful interpretations which he can put upon God's word, and no clown to entertain us with jests and anecdotes. Nor do we want the eloquent orator, who perhaps may break down in one of his finest passages which he has well conned over and learned by heart; nor do we require a dry doctrinalist, or contentious disputer, or a personal railer. But we greatly want the sound, sober, well-taught man of God, whose grace we see in his heart and life, and whose gift we feel in the power and savor of his ministry.

Our own belief is that whenever God sends a man to preach his word, he always furnishes him with a suitable gift; and that one mark of this gift is such a seasonable measure of variety as shall make his ministry from time to time a living word, springing out of and kept up by a living inward experience of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We are never so safe as when we are on strict Scripture ground; indeed, off that ground we are never safe at all. It is for this reason that in our Meditations on the Ministry of the Gospel we have adhered so closely to the word of truth, and preferred bringing forward select passages in which the Holy Spirit has clearly unfolded its true nature and character, and opening, to the best of our ability, their spiritual meaning, to dealing with the subject in a wider and looser way by general observations of our own. But the letter of Scripture is one thing, and the interpretation of it is another. We might quote right passages, and yet give them a wrong interpretation. We believe, however, that we have not so erred. At least, we can declare with all holy boldness the inmost conviction of our conscience that, with the exception of such infirmities and defects of knowledge or expression as all are subject to, we have interpreted the word of the Spirit according to the mind of the Spirit. This may seem to some a bold assertion; but we will make a still bolder one in the expression of our conviction that whoever undertakes to instruct the Church of God must have the fullest certainty in his own mind that what he brings forward is in harmony with the mind of the Spirit, or he is utterly unfit either to stand up in a pulpit or to handle a pen in the cause of God and truth.

Carrying out, then, this plan, we are now engaged in opening the mind of the Spirit as expressed by the Apostle, Eph. 4:11-16, and have advanced in our explanation as far as the end of verse 12—"For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." In the verses which immediately follow, and which we shall presently quote, the fruits and effects of the ministry are unfolded with equal clearness and beauty, as we hope to show by our exposition of them—"Until we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ; from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplies, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, makes increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." (Eph. 4:13-16.)