p. 329 | The Sabbath School

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 22, 1880

The Sabbath School.

“THE LAME TAKE THE PREY.”

The following is from a sermon delivered by Dr. Talmage, February 1, 1880. Let all those who have heretofore excused themselves from engaging in the work of the Lord because of inability take courage, consecrate themselves to God, and enter heartily into his service.

“There are those who would like to do good. They say, ‘Oh, if I only had wealth, or if I had eloquence, or if I had high social position, how much I would accomplish for God and the church.’ I stand here to-day to tell you that you have great opportunities for usefulness.

“Who built the Pyramids? The king who ordered them built? No; the plain workmen who added stone after stone, and stone after stone. Who built the dykes of Holland? The government that ordered the enterprise? No; the plain workmen who carried the stuff and rung their trowels on the wall. Who are those who have built these vast cities? The Capitalists? No; the carpenters, the masons, the plumbers, the plasterers, the tinners, the roofers, dependent on a day’s wages for a livelihood.

“And so in the great work of assuaging human suffering and enlightening human ignorance, and halting human iniquity. In that great work the chief part is to be done by ordinary men with ordinary speech, in an ordinary manner, and by ordinary means.

“The trouble is that in the army of Christ we all want to be captains, and colonels, and brigadier-generals. We are not willing to march with the rank and file and do duty with the private soldier. We want to belong to the reserve corps, and read about the battle while warming ourselves at the camp fire, or on furlough at home, our feet upon an ottoman, we sagging back into an arm-chair.

“As you go down the street you see an excavation, and four or five men are working, and he perhaps twenty or thirty leaning on the rail looking over at them. That is the way it is in the church of God to-day; where you find one Christian hard at work, there are fifty men watching the job!

“Oh, my friends, why do you not go to work and preach this gospel? You say, ‘I have no pulpit.’ You have. It may be the carpenter’s bench, the mason’s wall. The robe in which you are to proclaim this gospel may be a shoemaker’s apron. But woe unto you if you preach not this gospel somewhere, somehow. If this world is ever brought to Christ it will be through the unanimous and long-continued efforts of men who, waiting for no special endowment, consecrate to God what they have.

“Among the most useless people in the world are men with ten talents, while many a one with only two talents, or no talent at all, is doing a great work, and so ‘the lame take the prey.’ There are thousands of ministers, of whom you have never heard, in log cabins at the West, in mission chapels at the East, who are warring against the legions of darkness, successfully warring. Tract distributors, month by month undermining the citadels of sin.

“Who are the workers in our Sabbath-schools throughout this land to-day? Men celebrated, men brilliant, men of vast estate? For the most part not that at all. I have noticed that the chief characteristic of the most

THOSE WHO ARE SUCCESSFUL

in the work is that they know their Bibles, are earnest in prayer, are anxious for the salvation of the young, and Sabbath by Sabbath are willing to sit down unobserved and tell of Christ and the resurrection.

“These are the humble workers who are recruiting the great army of Christian youth—not by might, not by power, not by profound argument, not by brilliant antithesis, but by the blessing of God on plain talk and humble story, and silent tear, and anxious look. ‘The lame take the prey.’”