Gospel Workers' Department by A. G. Daniells

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 8, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 32.

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Gospel Workers' Department

By A. G. Daniells

Their divine calling, qualification, and preparation. Methods of labor, plans, etc.

Conducted by A. G. DANIELLS

The Importance of the Gospel Ministry

Some Valuable Quotations

THE quotations given this week relate to the very important and responsible place the ministry occupies in the gospel plan of salvation. Ministers are Christ's "ambassadors," "stewards of the mysteries of God."

Ideals

"Ideals are inspirations, incentives to effort, calls to come up higher. They fill us with a blessed discontent of the past, and stir us with an eager longing to do better things. They make a dead level impossible in any calling. Of all men, the man in the ministry is the one who should have ideals. The ideal 'consecration,' the ideal 'life,' the ideal 'stewardship,' the ideal 'church,' the ideal 'kingdom,'—he can tolerate nothing less than these. They are set before him by his Lord. "For the attainment of these God-appointed ideals, one of the God-appointed means, and the chief, is the ministry of the word of God by the man of God. And in the prosecution of this ministry, the ideals of it we hang up in our sky, if worthy, though they may shame our past, will nevertheless prove incentives to higher things. So that idealizing in the ministry is not theorizing, nor ballooning, nor getting lost in the clouds. It is lifting a standard."—The Ideal Ministry, by Herrick Johnson, D. D., page 7.

Ministers Are Christ's Ambassadors

"Since his ascension Christ has carried forward his work on the earth by chosen ambassadors, through whom he speaks to the children of men, and ministers to their needs. The great Head of the church superintends his work through the instrumentality of men ordained by God to act as his representatives. "The position of those who have been called of God to labor in word and doctrine for the upbuilding of his church, is one of grave responsibility. In Christ's stead they are to beseech men and women to be reconciled to God; and they can fulfil their mission only as they receive wisdom and power from above. Christ's ministers are the spiritual guardians of the people entrusted to their care. . . . "The minister who is a coworker with Christ will have a deep sense of the sacredness of his work, and of the toil and sacrifice required to perform it successfully. He does not study his own ease or convenience. He is forgetful of self. In his search for the lost sheep

he does not realize that he himself is weary, cold, and hungry. He has but one object in view—the saving of the lost."—The Acts of the Apostles, pages 360, 362.

The Exalted Work of the Ministry

"Jesus had called his disciples that he might send them forth as his witnesses, to declare to the world what they had seen and heard of him. Their office was the most important to which human beings had ever been called, and was second only to that of Christ himself. They were to be workers together with God for the saving of the world. As in the Old Testament the twelve patriarchs stand as representatives of Israel, so the twelve apostles were to stand as representatives of the gospel church."—Desire of Ages, page 291.

"I have often said that no monarch’s throne and no presidential chair is so exalted as a pulpit in which a living preacher presents a living Christ to dying souls."—The Young Preacher, by Theodore L. Cuyler, page 3.

"In every calling there must be belief in its great value before there can be intense ardor in its prosecution. It is not in the nature of mind to be stirred deeply by what it deems a trifle. Patriots are not born of low ideals. The things for which a man is willing to die are great things to him. The poet thinks no other art like his; he calls it divine. So, too, the painter and the sculptor; they have exalted conceptions of their work. Hence they come to their canvas and marble all aglow, with an enthusiasm that burns within them. And the canvas and the marble catch their spirit, and glow and breathe and speak under their touch. If an artist thinks meanly of his art, it will be mean art that is born in his studio. So, a conception of the gospel ministry as merely a respectable means of livelihood—a kind of bread-and-butter conception—will beget a tame ministry. If it is thought to be godlike, the godlike will appear in the heavenly doing. "It behooves us, therefore, at the very outset of our discussion, to inquire what those vital features of the gospel ministry are that set it apart from every other ministry, and that stamp it as superior to every other ministry. And if we find there are such features, then to grasp these several ideas, to weigh them, and to come under the spell of their charm and power so that they shall cease to be mere intellectual beliefs, and become vitalized spiritual forces, is to be on the sure road to an ideal gospel ministry. "What, then, are those ideas, unique and matchless, transcendent in their worth and of eternal consequence, that give the gospel ministry its peculiar glory and sanctity? They are: Its permanent function, its supreme aim, its ruling spirit, its subject-matter, its preeminent business, its central theme, its eternal sanctions, and its cooperating agent. "The ambassadors of Christ who have hitherto come nearest to an ideal gospel ministry have been stirred the most mightily by these ideas. This has been the characteristic mark of their stewardship. They have widely differed in many respects—physically, intellectually, temperamentally, emotionally. The giants in Israel that have done great things for God—that have had a wide hearing and multiplied victories—have not all been intellectual giants. Some have been distinguished for wide scholarly research; some have had a soaring imagination; some have been logic on fire; some have been signally endowed with sanctified common sense. . . . "But these all, and a multitude more of winners and builders of souls, were alike in this: they intensely believed in, and were supremely dominated by, the several ideas that are here named as stamping and distinguishing the ideal gospel ministry."—The Ideal Ministry, by Herrick Johnson, pages 13-15.

"A preacher may not be a great man, but he must preach great matters. His pronouncement is sublime. The little child who holds a geography in his hands holds a geography of a whole round world. He is a lad; but the geography is a planetary concern. Initial to any dignified preachment, is the sense of its sheer immensity. To sail a toy boat on a puddle is quite a different employment from sailing a toy ship on an ocean. To some men preaching is sailing on a puddle. To such men, need it be said, preaching is a childish performance. A big man at a trivial task is ridiculous. Except a gospel be voluminous as an ocean, to preach is a petty employment. A stupendous gospel makes its proclamation a regal performance. . . . "The lure of the gospel is the lure not of wages, not of leisure, not of prestige, but the lure of things to be done, which, if not undone, this world would be left a wreck along the shores of the universe. If the gospel be not utterly necessary, it is utterly unnecessary. There is no halfway permission or commission to this Christ apostolate. Man is so great and so lost in the theory of Jesus as to lift all that touches him into the supreme passion of the world. "Unless a man feels this like the hack of a sword or the fierce jab of a spear, he must not preach. He is not big enough to preach to whom this gospel is not supremely great. Except a man’s ministry be momentous, he himself is trivial. "What think you, preacher, is your task sublime? Does it summon a strange enthusiasm to dawn and noon like glorious Mt. Tacoma of the Pacific Sea? If not, then you have missed your task. Let go. You will with dull certainty fumble a task whose magnitude you can not appreciate nor approximate. Men so little as to think the gospel lean must not undertake to preach it."—The Pastor Preacher, by Wm. A. Quayle, pages 17-19.

Luther’s Estimate of the Ministry

"There is no more precious treasure nor nobler thing upon the earth and in this life than a true and faithful parson and preacher. The spiritual preacher increaseth the kingdom of God, filleth heaven with saints, plundereth hell, guardeth men against death, putteth a stop to sin, instructeth the world, consoleth every man according to his condition, preserveth peace and unity, traineth young people excellently, planteth all kinds of virtue in the nation; in short, he createth a new world, and buildeth a house that shall not pass away."—The Work of Preaching, by A. S. Hoyt.