334 EARLY REMINISCENCES So far from the converted retiring like a wounded beast to shelter, to hide the sores and wait for recovery to soundness, he blows a trumpet in the market-place, sets up his scaffold and booth, and proclaims his wares " Free Justification without the Works of the Law, and Assurance." The Evangelical Fathers in the English Church repeatedly deplored the results of their teaching being too often a deadening of conscience and a recklessness in sin. And, now, the great work that lies before the Church is to recover conscience to soundness from the paralysis to which it has been subjected by the substitution of emotionalism for conduct. Where this false teaching has not demoralized, it has filled with self-assurance which is very hard to be broken down, but till broken down there can be no spiritual advance. Another great advantage that the Dissenting minister possesses over the parson of the Church is, that he is not suffered to become flat ; so soon as the ebullition of his zeal and fervour begins to subside, he is moved to another field of work. The Wesleyan minister, for instance, was not permitted to remain longer than three years with a congregation. He was neither suffered to get stale nor to discover the evanescence and shallowness of the results of his preaching. Consequently he never knew the unprofitableness spiritually of his utmost efforts. He lived in a fool's paradise, a paradise of Wesley's own creation and planting. The priest in the English Church is placed and continues for ten, twenty, thirty years in one parish, till his powers are exhaust and he has been disillusioned if he looked for conspicuous results. Moreover, owing to patronage, the proper man is not always placed in the most suitable cure, whereas the Dissenting minister is carefully selected, and sent to that sphere where his zeal and his abilities may best tell. Another point that the ordinant does not consider is the vast number of times that he will be required to preach when he has a parish and sole cure. What with two sermons on every Sunday, and addresses in Lent, on Christmas Day, Ascension Day, Harvest Thanksgivings, he is well off if he has to preach less than one hundred and twenty sermons in the year. And in three years he will have addressed his parishioners three hundred and sixty
