A Converted Ministry

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 7, 1879

A Converted Ministry.

DR. BOND, being once present at a conference at the time of the admission of a batch of young men on trial, and noticing the stress laid on talent and education, while nothing was said on personal piety as a qualification for the work, said he felt like rising and asking if the young men professed religion. It may be laid down as an axiom "that no man can produce in another spiritual experiences which he does not possess himself. Spiritual life propagates itself by sympathy—it is contagious."

Sermons to be useful should be the outgrowth of personal piety, and should bespeak communion with God. Homiletics, or theological institutions, never have and never will do much of this kind of work. Spiritual life is not drilled into us by any method of theological training ever yet invented by man; nor can the chief qualifications of an efficient soul-saving ministry be obtained by any such process. Paul declares his ministry was not of man; no part of his efficiency came from that source; he was "the Apostle of Jesus Christ."

This conscious amenability to the source from whence the commission comes, not only gives tone and character to the message, but secures honesty and faithfulness in its delivery. "I have not shunned to declare the whole counsel of God, and have coveted no man's silver, gold or apparel," is a thought ringing in memory at the recollection of some of the best successors of him who used these words to the elders of the church at Ephesus, that I ever heard or saw. They often seem to stand before me in venerable plainness and simplicity, delivering a message that sounded like a call to judgment.