p. 341 | Not a Sinecure

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 10, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 22.

Not a Sinecure.

THE ministerial office can never be innocently a sinecure. A lazy preacher is a disgrace to his calling and a scourge to the church. Idleness in him is deeply shameful and even positively criminal. There is always before him a field to be broken up, or sown, or reaped; God and conscience demand the culture. The urgencies of the work press upon him; the field, white to the harvest, allows no procrastination; it is a question of salvation or destruction; it must be reaped or it is lost. As with the Master, it must be ever in heart and upon lips, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" and "how am I straitened till it is accomplished?" —often baffled by difficulties and discouraged by apparent failure, but always at it.—Southwestern Methodist.