Sobriety of Ministers

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 12, 1864

Sobriety of Ministers.

Bro. White: The following taken from the American Wesleyan, having been perused with interest, I submit to you, hoping it may be interesting to other readers of Review if you think best to insert it. It well illustrates the growing tendency to pleasure-loving in these days. S. B. Whitney.

For thirty years a sense of the sacredness of the house of worship has been diminishing under the influence of lectures, so comic, droll, and vulgarly witty, as to keep congregations in roars of laughter, clapping, stamping, and shouting. If the power of habit is such, that a young man cannot go through a ball-room without dancing as he goes, what can we expect of youth, who, at the lecture, are expected to clap their hands, stamp, laugh, and shout with all their might? They will come into the house of worship scuffling, pushing, tripping, laughing, and jesting. They will be disorderly during service, and will go out more like a riot than a religious assembly.

Mr. G. made little impression on the Sunday, because on Saturday evening he had given a lecture in the same pulpit, at the close of which was sung,

"Old Tip's the boy that swings the flail, And makes the loco's all turn pale, Hurra, hurra, hurra."

Again, the solemn "Let us pray" on Sabbath morning made little impression, because the last thing the lecturer did on Friday evening before saying "Let us pray" was to sing,

"Do sign the pledge, and I'll marry your daughter, Then said the deacon I'll drink nothing but water, O that will be joyful, joyful, joyful, When I marry the deacon's daughter."

Will it be said, that public taste demands such comic lectures and songs? Then taste is vitiated, and we are tending to a state like that of the tenth century, when buffoonery was the popularity of the pulpit. Will it be said that fun was the life of the Washingtonian movement? It may in truth be said, that excessive fun and laughter-provoking drollery, and vulgar wit, ruined that cause, and nearly brought down the whole temperance cause with its ruin. The Washingtonians deserve great praise for their sympathy for the degraded; but in excessive mirth their enterprise evaporated.

You will point me to some erratic revivalist, as comic as a Drury Lane stage, who carries a congregation along in whirlwinds of excitement, laughing, weeping, and laughing again. I have seen him, heard him, and know him. I would rather read Shakespeare; for there is genius, while your revivalist has only low wit. He might act on the degenerate stage of this day, but Shakespeare would be ashamed of him. Do you tell of his glorious revivals? I have in mind one of them, where he counted one hundred converts, and in two years ninety-nine backslid, and the one who endured, was rooted and grounded in the new life, by some one, only known to God as a revivalist.

How did Christ preach? It would be almost blasphemous to even suppose him using the language of some popular preachers of our time. We almost turn pale to think of Jesus coming into a lecture, when a learned D. D. or Professor has wrought his audience to uproarious laughter.

"No room for mirth or trifling here."

Sin, death, and hell, are grave themes. The judgment is grave, eternity is grave. Treating these themes playfully is the parent of infidelity. Men often say that the minister does not believe, cannot believe, the doctrine he preaches, of endless punishment, while it takes no hold of him. He does not consider the awful meaning of the word eternity, or he cares little for the souls that perish, while he plays with the people at their homes, and plays in the pulpit, "courting a smile, when he should win a soul." "So did not Paul." Mark his deep seriousness. "For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God." And this was done "publicly and from house to house," and with "many tears." He had great heaviness and sorrow, wishing himself accursed from Christ, (crucified,) for the salvation of his countrymen. Read the lamentations of Jeremiah, the fasting, mourning, and weeping of Daniel, for their brethren when they saw the awful consequences of sin. Let the house of devotion be sanctified, the pulpit, the minister, the sermon, the lecture, all be sanctified. Let us open the doors of the sanctuary with devotion, and walk the aisles as on hallowed ground, and silently take our seats, not with salutations, and gossip, but with silent prayer.

"How pleased and blest was I, To hear the people cry, Come, let us seek our God to-day! Yes, with a cheerful zeal, We haste to Zion's hill, And there our vows and honors pay."