Pastors As Public Clocks Not Watches

I just started reading Spurgeon's Lectures To My Students. Chapter One is entitled, "The Minister's Self-Watch." Spurgeon, writes on the the need for pastors to be vigorous in their pursuit of holiness. This is so important because of the impact our holiness or lackthereof has on those we shepherd. He makes the great illustration that we are like public clocks and not watches.

It is with us and our hearers as it is with watches and the public clock; if our watch be wrong, very few will be misled by it but ourselves; but if the Horse Guards or Greenwich Observatory should go amiss, half London would lose its reckoning. So it is with the minister; he is the parish-clock, many take their time from him, and if he be incorrect, then they all go wrongly, more or less, and he is in a great measure accountable for all the sin which he occasions.