In accepting a call to the pastorate of a church, the following things
are understood: 1. That the pastor accepts as scriptural the doctrine
and practice of that church, and places himself under obligation to
teach and defend them; for this is obviously a chief duty in the office
of a pastor. If his convictions do not permit him to uphold the
doctrine and practice of the church, he is untrue to himself and to it
in accepting the office. And if, while occupying the pastorate, his
views of doctrine and practice undergo a change, he is, indeed,
entitled to full freedom of personal conviction and action, but he is
under obligation to resign his office; for an essential condition on
which it was conferred on him has ceased to exist, and every
consideration of honor requires him to withdraw from it. It is
difficult to conceive a more dishonorable position than that of a
pastor who, after having accepted the sacred office of teacher and
defender of the doctrine and practice of the Gospel, as understood by
the church, and having subsequently undergone a change in his own
convictions, shall still retain that office only to subvert the
doctrines he had placed himself under solemn obligation to defend.
2. It is understood, also, that he accepts the care of the souls of
that congregation as a sacred trust from Christ, to devote himself
without reserve in labor and prayer for their salvation. The one great
work of his life, to which all the faculties of his being are to be
consecrated, is the salvation of those souls and the edification and
perfection of that church. If he accepts the office for its emoluments,
for the literary position it gives him, or the stepping-stone to some
other position; or if he shall, while pastor, allow himself to become
absorbed in other interests, so as to divert his chief energies from
this sacred trust in the care of these souls, he is false to the pledge
involved in assuming the pastorate, and is guilty of a dishonorable
act. 3. It is further understood that he will maintain his post amidst
the adversity as well as the prosperity of the church, as the shepherd
to whom Christ has entrusted the care of that flock. Our Lord makes
fidelity to the flock in danger the test of a good shepherd: "The good
shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is a hireling,
whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the
sheep and fleeth; and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep"
(John x. 11, 12). The trials which may meet a church, so far from
justifying the pastor in leaving it, may be only an additional evidence
of his duty to remain. He may not abandon, in a time of perplexity and
danger, the flock the Lord committed to him.