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Lay Preaching

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 1, 1869

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 33, No. 23.

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Lay Preaching.

“I WANT to tell you,” said an American minister, “what a layman did for me in Greenfield, Mass. I was only sixteen years old. My mother had died in the previous December. I was driving the cows home toward evening through a slight rain. A man with an umbrella overtook me, and, holding it over me, said, “My boy, those are fine cows.” “Yes,” said I, “they are fine.” “Why, that one with the short horns and broad back is a Durham!” His interest in what interested me, won me. After a while he asked,
“Have you got a mother?”
“No, sir,” said I, “she died last winter.”
“What was the last thing she said?”
“O, sir, the last thing she said was, May God have mercy on these children!”
“Well, my boy, aint you a Christian?”
“No, sir.”
“Why aint you?”
“I expect it is because I love sin so much.”
“Fixing his eyes earnestly on mine, and shifting his umbrella so as to grasp my hand with his right hand he said,
“What, my boy, and you not a Christian?”
“No, sir,” said I, with streaming eyes, “but I want to be.”
“And then he talked with me so gentle and kindly that I never shall forget it. Oh the power of a seasonable word! It was lay preaching.”