4.  And yet such is the grace of God, such is the work of Christ, and such is the power and the patience of the Holy Ghost that, if we had only an adequate ministry in our pulpits, and an assisting literature in our homes, even this three-fold impossibility would be overcome and we would be saved.  But if the ministry that is set over us is an ignorant, indolent, incompetent, self-deceived ministry; if our own chosen, set-up, and maintained minister is himself an uninstructed, unspiritual, unsanctified man; and if the books we buy and borrow and read are all secular, unspiritual, superficial, ephemeral, silly, stupid, impertinent books, then the impossibility of our salvation is absolute, and we are as good as in hell already with all our guilt and all our corruption for ever on our heads.  Now, that was the exact case of Mansoul in the allegory of the Holy War at one of the last and acutest stages of that war.  Or, rather, that would have been her exact case had Diabolus got his own deep, diabolical way with her.  For what did her ancient enemy do but sound a parley till he had played his last card in these glozing and deceitful words;—­’I myself,’ he had the face to say to Emmanuel, ’if Thou wilt raise Thy siege and leave the town to me, I will, at my own proper cost and charge, set up and maintain a sufficient ministry, besides lecturers, in Mansoul, who shall show to Mansoul that transgression stands in the way of life; the ministers I shall set up shall also press the necessity of reformation according to Thy holy law.’  And even now, with the two pulpits, God’s and the devil’s, and the two preachers, and the two pastors, in our own city,—­how many of you see any difference, or think that the one is any worse or any better than the other?  Or, indeed, that the ministry of the last card is not the better of the two to your interest and to your taste, to the state of your mind and to the need of your heart?  Let us proceed, then, to look at Mansoul’s two pulpits and her two lectureships as they stand portrayed on the devil’s last card and in Emmanuel’s crowning commission; that is, if our eyes are sharp enough to see any difference.

5.  The first thing, then, on the devil’s last card was this, ’A sufficient ministry, besides lecturers, in Mansoul.’  Now, a sufficient ministry has never been seen in the true Church of Christ since her ministry began.  And yet she has had great ministers in her time.  After Christ Himself, Paul was the greatest and the best minister the Church of Christ has ever had.  But such was the transcendent greatness of his office, such were its tremendous responsibilities, such were its magnificent opportunities and its incessant demands, such were its ceaseless calls to consecration, to cross-bearing, to crucifixion, to more and more inwardness of holiness, and to higher and higher heights of heavenly-mindedness, that the apostle was fain to cry out continually, Who is sufficient for these things!  But so well