This is the second of twelve Shepherds' Conference messages I plan to offer by Spurgeon.

This sermon was one of the Presidential Addresses at the Annual Conferences of the Pastors’ College. Spurgeon always regarded the Conference as one of the most important in the whole year; and he devoted much time, and thought, and care, and prayer, to the preparation of his messages to the hundreds of pastors and students who were gathered together from all parts of the country and from around the world. Surrounded by his sons in the faith, many of whom were his own spiritual children, and all of whom delighted to call him President, leader, brother, friend, he spoke with a freedom and a frankness which could never be excelled, nor hardly equaled, in any other gathering; and the messages themselves supply abundant evidence of the solemn responsibility which he felt in speaking to such an audience, and of the faithfulness with which he discharged that responsibility. Though there is here the special, personal appeal to his own men, the subjects dealt with concern the whole Christian ministry at home and abroad, using the term “ministry” in its widest sense as applying to all servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. The clergy and ministers of all denominations, home and foreign missionaries, open-air preachers, Sunday-school and Bible-class teachers, tract-distributors, and Christians of all ranks will here find much that will help them to exercise that “all-around ministry” of which Spurgeon himself was so earnest an advocate and so bright an example.