Christ's Ambassadors by D. D. Chapin

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 6, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 30.

Christ's Ambassadors.

By D. D. Chapin

THE preacher should be an ambassador; he should speak in another's name; he should bring a message, and that not his own, and that message should have no strange or uncertain sound. There are many messengers, and all should bring and iterate and reiterate the same word. There is and can be but one faith. So it was intended to be. The pulpit has no business with "opinions," or "views," or individual notions; it should have no peculiar voice of its own. It should repeat, "Thus saith the Lord," no more, no less.

And now what is the actual fact as the world sees it? The idea of ambassadorship for the most part is lost; the messenger takes precedence of the message; pulpit is reared against pulpit; as a whole no clear, distinct, definite, message is brought; the "good news" everywhere conflicts with itself, and so the world judges of it. The result is a hundred-headed, Babel-voiced thing. It is a gospel of contradictions, of negations. "Lo here. Lo there," this way, that way, any way; it neutralizes itself; what one would build up another tears down. And so is it to be wondered at that the world is distracted, bewildered, turns away, is indifferent? Such is, and must be, the result in the present disintegrated condition of the Christian world. Surely division and schism are the shrewdest of the devices of the adversary of the one church of God. Yet when the pulpit shall again bring as its message the truth, one, clear, intelligent, it will have no occasion to complain that men will not listen to it.