Wesley Corpus

Am I intent upon this one thing,-to do in every point “not my own will, but the will of Him that sent me?” Do I carefully and resolutely abstain from every evil word and work? “from all appearance of evil?” from all indifferent things, which might lay a stumbling-block in the way of the weak? Am I zealous of good works? As I have time, do I do good to all men? and that in every kind, and in as high a degree as I am capable? How do I behave in the public work whereunto I am called,--in my pastoral character? Am I “a pattern” to my “flock, in word, in behaviour, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity?” Is my “word,” my daily conversation, “always in grace,” always “meet to minister grace to the hearers?” Is my behaviour suitable to the dignity of my calling? Do I walk as Christ also walked ? Does the love of God and man not only fill my heart, but shine through my whole conversation? Is the spirit, the temper which appears in all my words and actions, such as allows me to say with humble boldness, Herein “be ye followers of me, as I am of Christ?” Do all who have spiritual discernment take knowledge (judging of the tree by its fruits) that “the life which I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God;” and that in all “simplicity and godly sincerity I have my conversation in the world?” Am I exemplarily pure from all worldly desire, from all vile and vain affectious? Is my life one continued labour of love, one tract of praising God and helping man? Do I in everything see “Him who is invisible?” And “beholding with open face the glory of the Lord,” am I “changed into the same image from glory to glory, by the Spirit of the Lord?” Brethren, is not this our calling, even as we are Christians; but more eminently as we are Ministers of Christ? And why (I will not say, do we fall short, but why) are we satisfied with falling so short of it? Is there any necessity laid upon us, of sinking so infinitely below our calling? Who hath required this at our hands? Certainly, not He by whose authority we minister.