MINISTERIAL FIDELITY

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 24, 1877

MINISTERIAL FIDELITY.

A CLERGYMAN recently remarked to us that, as a rule, ministers will give their people anything they want, and so it happens, perhaps, that as city congregations are supposed to dislike the thunders of the law, the pastors prophesy smooth things. It is a pity, but yet it is true. Faith and love are everything, repentance of little moment; the mercy of God is duly presented; his justice is almost ignored; the glories of the New Jerusalem are much descanted on, but the pains of hell are studiously kept in the background. It would appear to be deemed unfashionable to urge sinners to “flee from the wrath to come;” yet is it not as needful now to warn the unrepentant of their doom as it was when our Saviour spake to his followers of the undying worm, and the fire that never shall be quenched?

God's invitations of mercy are found on almost every page of the Scriptures; but the warnings and threatenings are uttered with impressive frequency too. It is therefore plainly a minister's duty to give as due prominence to the admonitory teachings of holy Writ as did He “who knoweth the heart,” and who commands his servants to proclaim a full gospel whether men will hear or forbear.

It is high time that pastors ceased to feed their people with such husks as those referred to. We want ministers who shall “not shun to declare the whole counsel of God,” Baxters who will exhort to holy living and the godly bringing up of the young, and who will tell their hearers that if they continue in sin they are lost; for we are of those who believe just what the Bible teaches about the day of final reckoning, when the tares shall be separated from the wheat. We believe that there will be a catastrophe; that in some way, to be perceived or understood by us, the trumpet will sound and the dead will rise, and the thrones will be set, and the books will be opened, and high and low, rich and poor, shall walk with equal step up to the judgment-seat of God, to be condemned or justified, “and these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.”

Many sermons now-a-days have little Bible truth about them but the text. The elaborate essay with a profusion of illustrations from the great names in ancient and modern philosophy, is the thing. The Apostle of the Gentiles preferred to tell his people of what was said and done by the holy men of old, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Perhaps such themes are considered too trite and homely as subjects for sermons to fashionable audiences. They were not so in the hands of Paul, who declares in Hebrews 11th that time failed him to tell all the thoughts and feelings about them, that came surging to his lips. The rousing spirit of his eloquence, as he discourses of their faith and achievements, makes one's hair stand on end. Ministers err in supposing that this preaching to the intellect merely is satisfying to those who come to hear it. Even worldly and unconverted people easily discern that it is not “the truth as it is in Jesus.” It may be very fine, but it does not feed the soul with that bread of life of which if a man eat he shall never hunger. Educated business men, no matter how careless about these things, can discriminate readily between a flourish of rhetoric and that simple truth which is the power of God unto salvation.

Then there are ministers of evangelical churches, who never once from January to December enjoin the practice of family worship upon their people. It is not fashionable. Neither is the weight of their influence thrown into the scale, as it should be, against pernicious amusements and social dissipations which are so demoralizing, especially to the young, for even the theater has been furnished with a cloak of respectability from the pulpit, and church members taught that even frequent attendance at it was quite consistent with regular communion at the Lord's table. Do the natural proclivities of our youth need such encouragement? Such things indicate the lack of deep convictions in pastors, and if they know not themselves “the terror of the Lord,” how can they persuade men?—Christian Intelligencer.