The Lord Hath Need of Thee by Matilda Erickson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 13, 1910

The Lord Hath Need of Thee

By Matilda Erickson

MATILDA ERICKSON

Workers Needed

“THE Lord hath need of thee” is God's message to every father and mother, to every young man and young woman. “The Lord hath need of thee;” for the work that the centuries have neglected must be crowded into the sunset hour of earth's history, and great is the work to be done. Before us lies a world dying without God. “Many of the boys and girls who to-day walk upon the streets of Jerusalem,” said a missionary from Palestine to the delegates to the recent World's Sunday-school Convention, “have never heard of Jesus.” Mr. Paxton, pioneer Sunday-school worker in the United States, was one day driving over the hills in the Mississippi basin. He overtook a lad of fourteen, and invited him to ride. Mr. Paxton spoke about the love and sacrifice of Jesus. “Why,” said the lad in astonishment, “nobody ever died for sinners in our neighborhood, leastways if there has, I never heard of it.”

Statistics tell us that each passing hour an average of seven hundred persons in Africa, eight hundred in India, and fourteen hundred in China, sink into Christless graves. Then think of our own great cities. It would take an evangelist four years to reach each individual in Chicago, allowing that every evening he be given an entirely new audience of one thousand persons. More than ten years would be required to thus touch the millions of New York City. Placing before us these few reminders of the stupendous needs at home and abroad, shall we not emphatically say to our own hearts, “The Lord hath need of thee”?

The Lord is pleading with his people to bring every resource into service. How shall we answer the call? Are we turning all our energies into God's work? The spirit of prophecy tells us distinctly that “we have an army of youth to-day who can do much if they are properly directed and encouraged.” But where are our young people of ten years ago? What proportion of them are bearing responsibilities in the Lord's work? Are our churches everywhere strengthened and helped by the consecrated energies of men and women who a few years ago were children in our midst? Many of our brightest young people in the past have drifted into the world. A large proportion of these, we have been told, might have been saved to the work through “well-organized plans.”

Enlisting Our Youth

For years the smoke from the copper mines in Glamorganshire, Wales, was a plague to the surrounding country. It destroyed crops for twenty miles around. Just behind the mine was a steep mountain, near the top of which a small stream had its source. One day an engineer conceived the idea of constructing a flue up the mountain, and turning this stream into it. This was done; and now as the water flows down, it condenses the smoke. Once a year the flue is cleaned; and the smoke, which was formerly a destructive waste, now yields a ton of precipitated copper. For thousands of years the Niagara thundered idly over the precipice, but it has been harnessed into service. Cottonseed, formerly considered a waste product, to-day brings great profit to the cotton industry. The commercial world has learned well the lesson of utilizing all its resources. Let us hope that the church of God will be equally shrewd in letting no choice material escape as waste products.

Is it not time that those energies of our youth which are thundering over the precipice into the commercial world be harnessed into service for God? As the engineer constructed a flue up the mountain, should not some prayerful plans be laid whereby the enthusiasm of our youth shall be condensed for Christian service? There is but one answer. We must enlist, hold, and train our young people. The work needs them, and they need the work—they need the work. And just here, permitting nothing to dim our vision of the world's great need, let us dwell for a few moments upon the fact that the young people do need the work. The salvation of our youth will depend largely upon their answer to the call to service. “Those who reject the privilege of fellowship with Christ in service,” says the spirit of prophecy, “reject the only training that imparts a fitness for participation with him in his glory.” Again we read, “The work that lies nearest our church-members is to become interested in the youth;” and, again, “Much has been lost to the cause of God by lack of attention to the young.”

Thus upon the church a divine hand places the responsibility of training the youth—the youth whom the Lord has appointed to be his helping hand in the closing work. This appeal is not a call to retrench the work in the foreign fields, and concentrate our efforts at home. The forces in the regions beyond must be strengthened. The call is rather one for pressing the youth into service, that they

may carry their God-appointed responsibilities; and that we may have a strong, well-disciplined standing army in the home field,—an army serving at home and preparing to serve abroad.

Workers have always urged young people to accept Christ and join the church. And the fact that ninety per cent of all who become Christians are converted before they are twenty is an all-sufficient argument for putting forth a special effort for the youth. But is there not a tendency to slacken our efforts for them as soon as they have been baptized and made church-members? How strange! What would we think of a gardener who would transplant a choice shrub, and then give it no further attention? Transplanting is a critical experience to the young Christian as well as to the shrub. Our youth who are converted should be tenderly cared for at least until they shall have become thoroughly rooted and grounded in the knowledge of God. Satan does not retire from the field because one becomes a church-member, neither should the soul-winner relinquish his efforts.

(Concluded next week)

Takoma Park, D. C.