Separate the Levites

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 20, 1908

“Separate the Levites”

WHEN the apostles found that they were being overburdened, even with the legitimate work of caring for the poor among them, they said to the believers, “It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables;” and they asked that brethren should be appointed to attend to these matters. It is certain that the mind can not be largely occupied with business cares and perplexities, and at the same time be in the best condition for appreciating and presenting spiritual truth. Even a secular paper perceives this, and has expressed the fact in these words:—

You can not plow with a race-horse and expect him to keep his speed. A man absorbed in business for six days can not emerge as an uplifting speaker the seventh.

There is a lesson here which might profitably be studied by many whose time and energies are so largely devoted to secular affairs that their preaching does not lift their hearers above the ordinary plane of Christian experience.