Acts xx. 26, 27. / take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.
NO one can be conceived more averse to egotism than was the Apostle Paul. Yet, on some occasions,
he felt it necessary, for the vindication of his own character, to assert what was true, even though the assertion did tend to place his actions in a more fa- vourable point of view than he would have wished to place them, if such a necessity had not existed. Nor was it only when impelled by necessity that he so acted. There were occasions whereon a regard for the souls of men induced him to refer to his own feelings and proceedings towards them, that so he might the more deeply interest them in that line of conduct which he prescribed ; and which would issue in their own eternal welfare. Such were the circum- stances under which he made the appeal before us. He was addressing the elders of the Ephesian Church, whom he had sent for to Miletus, and whom he knew that he should never behold again in this world. He therefore reminded them how he had conducted him- self amongst them; that so he might engage them, after his departure, to tread in his steps. The words which I have just read refer to the Ministerial fidelity which he had exercised towards them, and to the satisfaction with which, in the prospect of the future judgment, he looked back upon it ; since he had a testimony in his own conscience, and in their con- sciences also, that, whatever might eventually be the effect of it with respect to them, " he was pure from their blood."
In opening the subject of Ministerial fidelity, I will shew,
I. Wherein it consists —
The Apostle sums it up in this one expression : " I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God."
"The counsel of God" is that which he has revealed in the Gospel of his Son —
[It is elsewhere called " the word of reconciliation ; namely, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto thema." This, of course, comprehends all that relates to our fall in Adam, and
a 2 Cor. v. 19.