Acts 6:4

4. Give ourselves… continually Προσκαρτερησομεν . We will persevere in, or continue in; constantly, yet not exclusively. Their spiritual office exempted them from official attention to temporal charities, but was no cessation from spontaneous alms. As Christ was, at first, divine Apostle, (Hebrews 3:1,) and contained within himself all authority, so his apostles were the source whence all church-official grades are derived. As Dr. Schaff well says, (“Apostolic History,” 499:) The higher (the apostolate) “includes the lower, not the reverse.” “The apostles were at the same time prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, and at first had charge even of the business of the deacons, Acts 4:35; Acts 4:37; Acts 6:2.” What was peculiar to the apostles alone left the earth with them; but all other ministries are carved out of what was transmissible in them, and all true ministers are successors of the apostles.

Prayer… ministry of the word These every minister inherits as his blessed perquisite and privilege from the apostles. In the divine establishment of the Church the “ministry of the word” is a permanent institution. “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature” is the command, followed by the promise of Christ’s presence “until the end of the world.” So that preaching and preacher stand while the world stands. It is by the foolishness of preaching the world is to be saved. And such a preacher is divinely “called” to his work. That call by the moving of the Holy Ghost is manifested to his own soul by an impressive sense of duty, an assuring testimony to the soul from God upon prayerful inquiry, and a deep love and attraction for the blessed work of gaining souls for Christ and heaven. Without such a “call” no man should ever enter the ministry of reconciliation.

We do not say that a man may not, by the same Spirit and in a similar way be “called” to some other “calling,” as to be a physician or a mechanic. Did men consult the divine will in a profounder spirit of devotion the divine “call” would be oftener recognized. But if the call and the Spirit may be much the same, the destination to which the call directs is profoundly different. Medicine is not a spiritual institution; it has not the direct notice of revelation; it forms no part of a divinely established Church; and the divine call directs a man to it as to a secularity. But the minister is divinely called to a divinely constituted work, office, responsibility, danger, and dignity. And we may add that such a call may be outlived and forfeited. Many a minister gives evidence, by the loss of the true spirit of a minister, that he has lost his call as a minister.