p. 179 | Short Sermons

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 24, 1870

Short Sermons.

WE read with wonder of the time, long ago, when audiences enjoyed sermons two hours long, and ministers prayed an hour “to edification.” It seems hardly credible to the men of our generation. But we are certainly going to the opposite extreme, and it may be duty to resist the enervating tendencies of the age. Rev. Mr. Thwing, of Quincy, in a recently published sermon, says:

But while we frankly make these concessions, and cheerfully admit that short services, on the whole, are most effective, we believe that if God’s word and worship were really precious, we should more patiently endure lengthened services and inconvenient postures, as did the vast congregation at Jerusalem. We cannot help entering a protest against the attempts now making in this direction to circumscribe the power of the pulpit. We speak, not in the spirit of acrimony, but with grief, of the causes at work about us which are begetting a disrelish for Sabbath worship. One hour of public worship a week is all that can be afforded for the presentation of God’s claims to our homage and service.

One hour is all that most of people can allow for the public service of God, when six days, not to say nights, are oftentimes given to “the world, the flesh, and the devil.”

How must God view these steady inroads upon this his holy day and worship? Not enough is it that theaters open all the week, shall be again opened and crowded on the Sabbath for concerts, secular lectures and Shakespeare reading; not enough is it that extra accommodations are furnished for excursionists who wish to ride, or sail, or visit their friends, on the Sabbath; not enough is it that the church give up its afternoon service, and but one sermon a week be preached; not enough is it that all these demands be granted, but we are told in the public prints, from time to time, that ministers ought to shorten their pulpit exercises. Yes, some whom a whole night in the ball-room can not sicken, are thoroughly prostrated by more than thirty minutes’ preaching!

But yesterday we read of a good idea. “A good idea!” What was it? This, the construction of a pulpit which should either be closed by an extinguisher above, or be emptied by a trap door below exactly at the expiration of thirty minutes after the delivery of the text. This is all the time that can be allowed, this the point of limitation beyond which forbearance is no longer a virtue. Thirty minutes a week—supposing every Sabbath to be pleasant—are all that can be relished or even tolerated for the utterance of God’s truth!

Along by this we read of a “rich treat.” What is that? Midnight revels, dances and farces, “kept up with a whirl and excitement until the hour of separation, between one and two o’clock.”