The Need for a Qualified Lecturer
By B. F. Weed
BRO. SMITH: In the providence of God I am still an inhabitant of this sin-polluted world, a pilgrim and a stranger, but thanks be to our Father in heaven I am looking for a better country and heavenly, and a glorious city, whose builder and maker is God. The cause in which you are engaged I firmly believe to be a good one; one on which God has placed the seal of approbation, and I feel willing to sacrifice anything for its advancement. We feel the need of a well qualified lecturer in this barren and unfruitful land; for there are many souls here that are truly suffering a spiritual drought for the pure word of life—I mean that portion which has been so much neglected or else perverted from its true meaning. The ministry in this region almost universally are opposed to the Advent doctrine and they have almost as much influence over the people as the Pope of Rome has over his churches. We are opposed, despised and rejected by the people around us; but I can say that I rejoice in being rejected for Christ's sake. And now dear reader, permit me to ask a few solemn questions which I hope you will not pass over without deliberate consideration. Like an individual man, the world of nature and of human character in the aggregate has the character of progressive and limited existence. The times indicate its maturity and dissolution. The prominent symptoms are those of decay. Oppression, fraud, avarice, pride, licentiousness and all the forms of vice are brought to maturity. In craftiness, refinement and outrage in all of them, the world manifests the certainty of old age ripened for the concluding judgments of heaven. We believe they will soon break upon it. All nations now existing seem to have arrived at a maturity for universal dissolution and destruction. I ask, Why should not the day soon close and the night set in upon the world? Has it not had time enough to repent? Has it not hardened its heart enough, shed blood enough, wrought misery and wrong enough? Has it not sown sufficiently for its harvest? Is it not ripe, just ready for the thrusting in of the sickle to the gathering for the great wine-press of the wrath of God? Has not this earth been possessed by the wicked long enough, and been made by them a theatre of murder and all crimes and miseries? Is not the time now near for the righteous, its lawful heirs, to possess it? Is not the time now near for Satan's kingdom to give place to the reign of Christ and his saints? Do not the times indicate it? Whatever primitive christianity now exists, is no more than that little spark of faith which our Lord foretold would be found on earth by him when he should come? Then dear friends, heed the loud calls and warnings from high heaven and prepare for the coming events that await us all. Give up the world, renounce it totally and forever, forsake all for Christ, let go all hold upon the pleasures, the possessions and the honors that are seen for those that are not seen. To do this fully, enduring unto the end, is a trial of the heart and the soul to the utmost. But what earthly pleasure or treasure will one not give up in prospect of such overwhelming joy as the end of this sin-distracted and convulsed world and the beginning of a new creation, in which as christians, we all hope to participate. New heavens illuminated with a cloudless sun of ineffable glory, spangled with stars far brighter than our present sun; a new earth surrounded with an immortal atmosphere, filled with unfailing freshness, sweetness and beauty, and decorated with charms incomparably superior to that of Eden and its ancient paradise; animated too, with the presence of nature's eternal and immortal King, and his celestial train; the eternal home of the saints where Sickness and sorrow pain and death,
Are felt and feared no more.
I say, Who would not gladly exchange a sin-emaciated frame and shattered constitution, sown thick with the seeds of death, for a spiritual and immortal frame? a shipwrecked earth filled with unquenchable fires and convulsed with agony, all covered with floods of water that washed and drenched its deeply furrowed face, with a thousand mountains and valleys, for a new earth never to be trodden by the profane foot of a prodigal during the ceaseless ages of eternity? And now I will close by setting before you St. Luke's admonition to us all. Luke xxi, 34. Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. Yours striving for the coming kingdom.
B. F. WEED.
Middle Grove, N. Y., July 12th, 1857.