The True Minister

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 27, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 21.

The True Minister

Rev. Thomas Dixon, of New York, is credited with the statement that "the ministry is one of the most overcrowded of all professions, and hundreds of men engaged in it are mere tramps, hunting for work." This is putting the ministry on a common level with the ordinary work of the world. As a matter of fact, every true minister is a "tramp" hunting work; but there is a distinction between him and the ordinary tramp, in that the true minister always finds the work. He finds it in "going about doing good." He never is out of a job, for the reason that he has entered the service of the Master for life. He does not go about seeking a salary, for he knows that his Master is cognizant of his necessities. "When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said, Nothing." There is a vast difference between the minister of Christ and the "preacher" who follows "preaching" as a mere business. The latter "profession" is undoubtedly "overcrowded," but in the Lord's missionary field it is as true to-day as ever it was that "the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few."