British vicar Charles Bridges (1794 – 1869) is best known for his volume The Christian Ministry. One of his most fervent passions was his love for the Church and the dignity of the Christian ministry. Here he shows how the Church is positioned as one of the world’s greatest treasures.
[T]he Church [is] the most important blessing to the world! What an extensive medium of pouring forth the light and life of the Gospel upon a benighted world! What a vast and valuable body of moral influence would it spread throughout its widely expanded sphere! How would its wise and kindly control of “the madness of the people” impose a check even upon the political convulsions of the earth! And what an unlimited flow of national, social, and individual blessing would be communicated to our own, and to every land through this divinely-appointed channel!1
Footnotes:
1 Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry with an Inquiry into the Causes of Its Inefficiency (1830; repr., Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2001), 3-4.
