EDIFICATION by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 2, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 46.

EDIFICATION.

By Editor

EDIFY means to build up. Edification is the building of Christian character, the laying a solid foundation and the building an enduring edifice on it. This building is a slow, laborious process. But it means permanence, stability, solidity. The absence of this edifying process is one of the alarming defects in modern Christian character. It resembles the Arabian tent rather than the temple, the flower rather than the oak. The material out of which the character is made is too light and flippant; gravity and strength are discarded; granite has no place in the building. It is a very active life because very light; very full of work, but the work is on the surface.

It is of such frequent occurrence that it scarcely amounts to a surprise, to learn that the last defaulter was a leading church man; that the last suicide was a prominent worker in the young people's church societies. Were they gross hypocrites? We do not believe so. They sized religion and got it according to the popular idea of what it is. It did not mean much to them, and it was not much to them, but about as much to them as to anyone else around, either in pulpit or pew. It was a feeble adherence to a feeble system; a busy doing of many churchly and official things; it was simply doing their part to make the church attractive to the world, breezy, social, enjoyable—the keeping up of its finances, and keeping it en rapport with the world—nothing farther from their thoughts than holiness and heaven, no stranger things nor stranger words to them than cross-bearing, self-denial, humility; the whole category of spiritual graces and forces were as foreign to them as to the Hottentot; not a splinter from the real cross, not a semblance of New Testament faith or piety. They made a clean miss of the whole thing; not because of their duplicity, but because of their simplicity, they could see nothing else, there was nothing else around them but this caricature of religion, this shadow without the substance, this form without the power. They sang much; but they sang out of the "supplement"—made up mostly of woman's hymns. As far as regards the ten commandments or the sermon on the mount, they had never heard there were any commandments or any sermon on the mount.

The pulpit is the chief sinner in these cases. It is mostly, if not wholly, to blame for this state of things. With them the humorous, the showy, the sensational, the emotional, or the tasteful and proper, have taken the place of the more homely and scriptural function—that of edifying.

Our pulpits need to be soaked in a few of Paul's precepts about edifying. We please our people; that won't do. We stimulate them; that is worse. We poke fun, spin theories, run syllogisms, stir up feelings. We are hot or cold, dry or moist, cry or laugh. These do not edify; they may take the starch and ice out of us, but edification means to put adamant in the foundation,—iron in the blood and steel in the nerves. It means to use the best material and the best workman, and make a job that will stand the cyclone, the fire, and the earthquake,—to make a character that will defy the world, the flesh, and the devil, and that will be good enough stuff out of which to make archangels. We are living in an age of adulteration, and the pulpit has caught the cue and is putting in, under a fine thin veneering, much bad material, and turns out many bad jobs, which look well and fresh in their tawdry dress, but there is no beauty, no strength, inside. We need spiritual character builders in the pulpit; men who can dig deep, and lay the foundation strong, and build a temple buttressed with God's omnipotence, all ablaze with God's jewels, and all radiant with his glory.

"Let all things be done unto edifying" is Paul's comprehensive direction about this matter. All things to build up—nothing for anything else; even adornment and symmetry are lost sight of. The pulpit has no right to assert its rights to do anything else but edify. "All things," says Paul, "are lawful for me, but all things edify not." "We do all things, dearly beloved, for your edifying;" this is the self-denying and laborious ordinance Paul obeyed.—St. Louis Christian Advocate.