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MINISTERIAL LAZINESS

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 22, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 48.

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MINISTERIAL LAZINESS

By Thomas De Witt Talmage

OFTEN empties the churches of auditors. Hearers who are intelligent through reading newspapers, and by active association in business circles, will not on the Sabbath sit and listen to platitudes. Hearers will not come to sermons which have in them no facts, no information, no stirring power, no adaptation, no fire. The pew will not listen to the pulpit unless, at least on the subject that day under discussion, the pulpit knows more than the pew. Ministerial laziness has cleared out many churches. Such ministers saunter around from parlor to parlor under the name of pastoral visitation, and go gadding about through the village or the city on errands of complete nothingness, and wrap their brains around a cigar and smoke them up, and then on Saturday afternoon put a few crude thoughts together, and on Sunday morning wonder that the theme of Christ and him crucified does not bring a large audience.—Talmage.