Christian Eloquence

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 5, 1871

Christian Eloquence.

Among the rarest treats we have enjoyed for a long time has been the perusal of the London Missionary Magazine and Chronicle for June. It contains the proceedings of the Anniversary of the London Missionary Society. The annual report and the addresses are of unusual interest. We give a paragraph from the eloquent address of Rev. Thomas Jones:—

“And let me say there have been days when the church was a power in the earth. We read of the heroic ages; they are praised by the old poets as the beautiful and distant ages when fact and myth embrace, where history and tradition meet—when tradition melts into history, and history, like another color in the rainbow, melts back into tradition. In that beautiful period they have placed the heroic ages when giants and Titans lived on the earth, and not small beings such as we are.

“Brethren, this is tradition and myth and poetry; but there have been real heroic ages in the church of God, when Moses communed with God on the trembling brow of Sinai; when David composed the spiritual hymns which thrill our hearts in the nineteenth century; when Isaiah with rapt seraphic fire spake to the sinful nations; when the Baptist thundered rebukes on the banks of Jordan; when the great Paul emptied the temples of Greece; when St. John saw visions in Patmos; when reformers struggled; when martyrs died—then there was power in the churches. Men were filled with the Holy Ghost. Ministers in England, we want power. Missionaries abroad, ye want power. Teachers in our colleges, ye want power, not only to send forth scholars, but inspired young men. Deacons of our churches, it is no time to sleep. Churches of the land, you ought not to be the dull, apathetic, material things many of you are. We cannot afford to be weak.

“There is power everywhere—power in the spring bursting through the great rock; power in the grass cutting its way through the soil; power in the lightning-flash. And shall the church be weak? I see the syren Pleasure like another ignis fatuus crossing from marsh to marsh in the devil's land, where so many of our youths are lost. Power enough hath the syren. Yes, brethren, power is everywhere; and shall we be weak and feeble? Our fathers sleep—let not the thunder disturb their slumbers; let not the lightning-flash wither the flowers on their graves. Brave men were they. I like to shake hands with them across the ages. They did their work nobly; they crossed the stage, and were hurried beyond the scene into the darkness of death. They are gone, and we are here; and shall we be weak? I don't mean that we can become as Moses and Jeremiah and Paul; but I do mean to say that as the ancient Titans went up to heaven and stole fire from the sun, you may go aside with God, touch the divine mind, and come forth divine men, to mold the hearts of this nation, or to spread the gospel of Christ in foreign lands. You have heard me kindly. I have spoken out brotherly on this subject. May God bless you all! May the power of the Lord God of Israel clothe his priests with salvation! May it be known in a dry, hard, harsh, skeptical age, that God is in Israel, and that religion is a power!”—Sel.