An Important Work by M. E.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 9, 1914

An Important Work

By M. E.

WHERE are the boys and girls who filled your Sabbath school fifteen years ago? How many of them are today filling places of responsibility in the Lord's work? Where are the others? Mr. Foster says that other evangelical churches are losing about seventy-five per cent of the boys that grow up in the Sunday school. An English writer says that the church loses its grip entirely on eighty per cent of the youth that pass through the Sunday school. What per cent of our young people are lost to us?

Some statistics gleaned from fifty churches in two of our Central States show that within a few years one hundred and fifty young people married out of the truth, and of these more than one half gave up the Sabbath. Four lawyers met in a stenographer's office in a Western city. The conversation turned on Seventh-day Adventists, and each of them admitted that he had been brought up in a Seventh-day Adventist home. These are a few of the painful incidents that might be given showing that many of our brightest young people in the past have drifted into the world. Many of these, we have been told, might have been saved to the work through "well-organized plans." See "Christian Education," pages 45, 46.

Let us turn to the commercial world for a lesson. We are told by good authority that the Standard Oil Company has made its millions, not by refining oil, but from the by-products, such as paraffin, lubricants, and gasoline. Has the Armour Packing Company accumulated its wealth by selling beef and bacon?—To some extent, but its greater profits are said to be drawn from the by-products of beef tea cubes, gelatin, hides, and glue. Two decades ago cottonseed was a waste product. The farmers dumped it into running streams that it might be carried away. But in recent years cottonseed has been utilized, and in 1912 the cottonseed products of Georgia alone were worth twenty million dollars. (Think of tons of crisco, cottolene, meal, and fertilizing material that drifted out into the gulf in previous years for lack of attention!) Shrewd manufacturers have gone further. They are grinding the stalk of the cotton plant into paper, and making umbrella handles from its roots.

For years the smoke from the copper mines in Glamorganshire, Wales, was a plague to the surrounding country. It destroyed crops for twenty miles around. Just behind the mine was a steep mountain, near the top of which a small stream had its source. One day an engineer conceived the idea of constructing a flue up the mountain and turning into it this stream. And now as the water flows down, it condenses the smoke. Once a year the flue is cleaned, and the smoke that was formerly a destructive waste now yields a ton of precipitated copper. For thousands of years the Niagara thundered idly over the precipice. But it has been harnessed into service. The commercial world has learned well the lesson of utilizing all its resources. Let us hope that the church of God may be equally shrewd in letting no choice material escape as waste product.

Is it not time that the energies of our youth which are thus thundering over the precipice into the world be harnessed into service for God? As the engineer constructed a flue up the mountain, should not some prayerful plan be laid whereby all this enthusiasm of our youth shall be condensed for Christian service? There is but one answer. We must enlist, hold, and train our young people. The work needs them, and they need the work.

"Very much has been lost to the cause of God by a lack of attention to the young. . . . There are among us many who are not ignorant of our faith, yet whose hearts have never been touched by the power of divine grace. Can we who claim to be servants of God pass on day after day, week after week, indifferent to these souls who are out of Christ? If they should die in their sins unwarned, their blood would be required at the unfaithful watchman's hands.

"Why should not this labor for the youth in our borders be regarded as the highest kind of missionary work? It will require the most delicate tact, the most thoughtful consideration, the most earnest prayer that heavenly wisdom may be imparted. The youth are the objects of Satan's special attacks; but kindness, courtesy, that tender sympathy that flows from a heart filled with love to Jesus, will give you access to them.

You may win their confidence so that they will listen to your words, and thus be saved from many a snare of the enemy."—"Christian Education," pages 222, 223.

Upon the church, a divine hand places the responsibility of training the youth, —the youth whom the Lord has appointed to be his helping hand in the closing work. This appeal is not a call to retrench the work in the foreign fields and concentrate our efforts at home. The forces in the regions beyond must be strengthened. The call is rather one for pressing the youth into service that they may carry their God-appointed responsibilities, and that we may have a strong, well-disciplined standing army in the home field, serving at home and preparing to serve abroad. M. E.