Now, my brethren, two dangers, two simply terrible dangers, arise to every one of you out of all this matter of your ministers and their knowledge. 1.  The first danger is,—­to be frank with you on this subject,—­that you are yourselves so ignorant on all the matters that a minister has to do with, that you do not know one minister from another, a good minister from one who is really no minister at all.  Now, I will put it to you, on what principle and for what reason did you choose your present minister, if, indeed, you did choose him?  Was it because you were assured by people you could trust that he was a minister of knowledge and knew his own business?  Or was it that when you went to worship with him for yourself you have not been able ever since to tear yourself away from him, nor has any one else been able to tear you away, though some have tried?  When you first came to the city, did you give, can you remember, some real anxiety, rising sometimes into prayer, as to who your minister among so many ministers was to be?  Or did you choose him and your present seat in his church because of some real or supposed worldly interest of yours you thought you could further by taking your letter of introduction to him?  Had you heard while yet at home, had your father and mother talked of such things to you, that rich men, and men of place and power, political men and men high in society, sat in that church and took notice of who attended it and who did not?  Do you, down to this day, know one church from another so far as spiritual and soul-saving knowledge is concerned?  Do you know that two big buildings, called churches, may stand in the same street, and have men, called ministers, carrying on certain services in them from week to week, and yet, for all the purposes for which Christ came and died and rose again and gave ministers to His church, these two churches and their ministers are farther asunder than the two poles?  Do you understand what I am saying?  Do you understand what I have been saying all night, or are you one of those of whom the prophet speaks in blame and in pity as being destroyed for lack of knowledge?  Well, that is your first danger, that you are so ignorant, and as a consequence, so careless, as not to know one minister from another.

2.  And your second danger in connection with your minister is, that you have, and may have long had, a good minister, but that you still remain yourself a bad man.  My brethren, be you all sure of it, there is a special and a fearful danger in having a specially good minister.  Think twice, and make up your mind well, before you call a specially good minister, or become a communicant, or even an adherent under a specially good minister.  If two bad men go down together to the pit, and the one has had a good minister, as, God have mercy on us, sometimes happens, and the other has only had one who had the name of a minister, the evangelised reprobate will lie in a deeper bed in hell, and will spend a