much you contribute to the aggrandizement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, to the honour of religion, to the consummation of the holy, and to the salvation of all believers! — how many of the chosen of every tongue and of every tribe shall one day, in heaven, place at your feet their crown of immortality, as if publicly to acknowledge their obligation to you! — what consolation to be able to say to yourself, that, in serving God, you will attract other servants to him, and that your piety becomes a blessing upon the people! No, my brethren, if there be any thing nattering in rank, it is not those vain distinctions attached to it by custom; it is the power of becoming, by serving God, the source of public blessings, the support of religion, the consolation of the church, and the chief instruments employed by God for the accomplishment of his merciful designs upon men.
Ah! what then do you not lose when you do not live according to God! What do we ourselves not lose when you are wanting to us! Of how many advantages do you deprive believers! Of what consolations do you not deprive yourselves! What joy in heaven for the conversion of a single great sinner in the age! How highly criminal when you live not according to God! You can neither be saved nor condemned alone. You resemble either that dragon of the Revelation, who, being cast out from heaven into the earth, drags after him in his fall so many of the stars; or that mysterious serpent spoken of by Jesus Christ, who, being exalted upon the earth, haply attracts all after him. You are established for the ruin or for the salvation of many; public scourges or comforts. May you, my brethren, know your true interests; may you feel what you are in the designs of God, how much you have it in your power to do for his glory, how much he expecteth of you, how much the church, and even we ourselves, expect of you! Ah! you have so high an idea of your rank and of your stations with relation to the world!
But, my brethren, permit me to say it to you, you are yet unacquainted with all their greatness; you see but the humblest part of what you are; you are still greater with relation to piety, and the privileges of your virtue are much more illustrious and more marked than those of your titles. May you, my brethren, act up to your lot! And thou, O my God! touch, during these days of salvation, through the force of that truth with which thou fillest our mouths, the great and the powerful; draw to thyself those hearts upon whose conquest depends that of the rest of believers; have compassion upon thy people by sanctifying those whom thy providence hath placed at their head; save Israel, in saving those who rule it; give to thy church great examples, who perpetuate virtue from age to age; and who assist, even to the end, in forming that immortal assembly of the righteous which shall bless thy name for ever and ever!
