A TRUE STORY | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 17, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 46.

A TRUE STORY.

THE church building was a handsome one; the congregation was a large one; the pastor was a popular one. He was an orator. His bearing was dignified, his manner affable and pleasant. He prepared and delivered his sermons with great care. He boasted that he was in harmony with modern thought, and of liberal views. He made the people feel comfortable in their inconsistent lives, and they made him happy with many compliments for his fine rhetoric and beautiful thoughts.

His congregation was as busy as a beehive. There were suppers, socials, entertainments, society meetings, and literary pastimes. The young people were trained for opera-house exhibitions; the people praised it, and the play was repeated.

There were Christmas trees in the winter, and picnics in the spring, and night excursions on the river or lake in the summer.

There had not been a sinner saved in that church for years; no one seemed to think or care about it. People joined that church as they would have joined a club or society. They died and dropped into hell.

The pastor was responsible for the fearful condition of things. Had he lifted up his voice in awful warning against sin, and the punishment that would follow, there would have been consternation in the camp. Many would have been angry, but many would have repented. Down in his heart he knew that his people were not Christians after the New Testament pattern, but he did not have the courage to tell them so, or the faith to lead them to Christ. His name is Legion. He is described in Jeremiah, twelfth chapter, tenth and eleventh verses: “Many pastors have destroyed My vineyard, they have trodden My portion underfoot, they have made My pleasant portion a desolate wilderness. They have made it desolate, and being desolate it mourneth unto Me; the whole land is made desolate, because no man layeth it to heart.”—The Methodist.