p. 197 | OF A SLOW TONGUE

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 5, 1881

OF A SLOW TONGUE.

A prime folly of the church has been hunting bears with greyhounds. A greyhound is swift, trim, and beautiful. For a quick chase, of certain game he is unexcelled. To tussel with bruin, a different species is called for. The slender, nimble, pretty, delicate thing is out of place. A grip of the beast would break the thin, weak creature to pieces. The short, ugly, bunchy bull-dog is the animal for bears.

The brilliant preacher is a botch at business. God chose a stammerer to get Israel out of Egypt. Fowler, as the magician of fraternal fustian, set all the good old people in the general conference to crying and cheering. Fowler, as the conductor of a great church paper, was like a bug in a bottle flying aimlessly up or flat on his back at the bottom. Jefferson the statesman, and Washington the general, were wordless before an audience. They, however, made America.

The church dotes on the declaimer. Bascom, whose bombast like the Amazon, the wonder of a continent, broad and burdened from fountain head to the sea with the brilliant blooms of the tropics, yet turning no mill, bearing no cargo—Bascom, the matchless rhetorican, was whirled by a gust of admiration into the bishopric. The business of the overseer, the superintendent of workers and work was committed to a man without the plain sense to take care of himself. The Lord of the vineyard removed him at once. He held but one conference.

There is reason to believe that Peter was much superior to Paul as a public speaker. The conduct of great and imperial concerns demanded the sagacity and statesmanship of the latter. It was Paul, the indifferent orator, that had the care of all the churches on him.

Nightingales and carrier-pigeons have supreme genius. We much fear the showy qualities of the tuneful bird would win the trusty position of a bearer of messages, though unfit by nature, if pleasing preachers had the balloting.

The most notable man in the ranks of the clergy succeeds to the Vatican. The Popes are conspicuous among learned cardinals. And yet Italy was the worst managed government in Christendom.

The southern church has not lacked in oratory. The “connectional” galaxy through all the years have been tip-top talkers, and with here and there an exception, the most incompetent men ever in trust of great affairs.—Richmond Christian Advocate.