Safeguarding the Influence

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 21, 1916

Safeguarding the Influence

SAYS Solomon, “Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honor.” The follower of the Master needs to guard well his influence. Something that might be considered of little moment in the life of a man of the world would be counted grievous error in the professor of Christianity. The Christian professes to follow Christ. Men judge Christ, not by the profession of his disciples, but by their lives. Indeed, all that many will ever know of Christ will be that which is revealed of him in the lives of his children.

Particularly is this true in the relationship of parents to their children. In their knowledge, the father and mother stand in the place of God. How necessary that their lives as well as their profession be godlike! How sad it is to see the father and mother profess to represent the character of Christ to their little ones, and manifest instead the weaknesses and passions of human nature!

Particularly should the minister of Christ guard his influence. The greater his reputation for wisdom and honor, for sincerity and godliness, the greater will be his influence for evil wherein his life fails truly to represent the life of the Master. He must exemplify outside the pulpit the instruction he gives in the pulpit. He must even guard his pulpit utterances. How often we see the dignity of the Christian ministry lowered by the use of crude illustrations or by the recital of some comical story, or by the making of remarks for the purpose of causing laughter and merriment. These methods are unworthy the high and dignified calling of the representative of Christ.

We read of Christ that he wept. We doubt not that he smiled, perhaps he laughed; but we cannot conceive that his teaching was interspersed with jokes, or that he sought to create merriment or to arouse laughter.

We read of old-time long-faced and solemn-visaged preachers who delighted in discourses upon hell fire and the terror of the Lord. These doubtless represented the opposite extreme. But better this solemnity than the modern cheapness and witticism which we find in the pulpit preaching at the present time.

The preaching of Christ combined the solemn and impressive with the hopeful and the courageous. The inspired psalms of David take us down to the lowest depths of solemnity in Christian experience, and raise us to the exultant heights of joy and confidence in God. But there is as wide difference between the seriousness which characterizes the teachings of the psalmist and moroseness as there is between the holy, sacred joy he expresses and the flippant tone of some of the preaching we hear today.

Let the ministers of Christ, in the pulpit and out of the pulpit, guard their influence, and remember, in the words of the wise man, that as “dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honor.”