Where Laborers Are To Come From.
FROM a sermon by T. De Witt Talmage, in the Methodist, we take the following in regard to who should labor in God’s cause, and how they can prepare themselves for the work. The suggestions ought to be immediately acted upon by many S. D. Adventists:— II. Again: I learn from the Methodist Church that, without passing through theological seminaries, men may have great success in presenting the gospel. I believe in theological seminaries; but they are to the Church just what West Point is to the State. What would you have done in the last war if you had had no soldiers except those who had been at West Point? The men who came from that institution controlled and marshaled the troops all over the land. The use of a theological seminary in this or in any other country is to send out men more thoroughly drilled, who are able to organize and marshal the great mass of Christian soldiery. Let Paul go up to Athens and preach, and send plain Matthew down among the fishing boats. Paul knew more in one hour than did Peter in his whole lifetime; but I think that Peter preached a more appropriate sermon on the day of Pentecost than Paul could have preached. Have you been so long under the delusion, and are you now under the delusion, that the few men who are ministers of the gospel are going to take this world for Christ? That the ten or fifteen men who every year come out of New-Brunswick Seminary, or the twenty or thirty that every year come out of Princeton, or Andover, or Yale, will do all the work? No! No! You might as well have expected a few quartermasters in the Northern army to conquer the Southern confederacy. You go into a factory, and you say: “What is the matter here? The factory is almost silent. There are only three wheels going, while you have five hundred wheels.” “Oh!” says the owner of the factory, “we are short of hands. We ought to have five hundred men here, but we have only three men at present.” That is just the state of things in the Church of God this day. We have grand and abundant machinery, but we have not men enough to run it. Now, in the Methodist Church, it has been the policy to set many to preaching without long delay. Though it has had theological seminaries doing an important work, it has not depended upon a few men who have been secluded for seven or eight years in learned institutions, but has sent hundreds and thousands of men from the work-shops, and factories, and stores, to preach Jesus Christ; and the very moment they began to study, they began to preach. I wish it were so in all the churches. I wish it were now so in that Church as much as once it was. We who are standing in the pulpits of this country begin to feel now like the English did at Lucknow before the Highlanders came up: we must either have recruits or surrender. Go to preaching this gospel. How shall you learn to preach? Just as the carpenter learns how to be a carpenter. Does he sit down and study books about tools, about hammers, and axes? Oh! no. He goes to boring with the bit, and smoothing with the plane, and smiting with the hammer, and striking with the adz; and in this way he gets to be a carpenter. So, the way to learn how to preach this gospel is to preach it. Yonder is a man who ought to be preaching the gospel. He has not been ordained, and never will be. He could not be, perhaps. It may be that he has not brains enough, or time enough, or money enough. But he is ordained of God. Let him preach. Here is another. He may not, perhaps, be able to round his sentences, or make elegant allusions, or fine quotations; and yet he may be able to save a soul from death, and hide a multitude of sins. Oh! for five thousand Moodys to come out from Chicago; and five thousand George H. Stuarts to come out from Philadelphia; and five thousand Henry F. Durants to come out from Boston, and preach this glorious gospel, waiting for no other ordination except that which comes from the hand of the Lord Almighty. The most eminent Christian layman in the city of New York said to me two weeks ago: “Mr. Talmage, if the masses of Christians do not go to work, and we continue to depend on the regular ministry in New York, we must go under.” We want lay colleges established; lay colleges in which men can study three minutes if they can study no longer, or three months, or one year, or three years, gathering up just such preparation as they can, and going forth to preach Jesus Christ to the people.