Christian workers must learn how to differ amicably.
It is a basic truth that we will never go farther in spiritual experience until we first go deeper.
Our testimony rather than our argument is needed. We are called to be God's witnesses, and not His lawyers.
Common honesty with God, with one's self and one's associates, is demanded of the preacher. Anything else is living a pretense.
It is comparatively easy to make assertions that cannot be proved. But the ipse dixits of man carry little weight with anybody.
Are we not in danger of making some false, artificial, and unwarranted tests of orthodoxy? The true tests are simple, sane, and Scriptural.
Songs of the message! And how we need them! Every great religious movement has had its own mighty religious songs. We are borrowing too much from others. We need more that is indigenous to this message.
Some of the cocksure pratings of would-be theologians would be laughable, if not so tragic. There are thousands of things we will never know until the perfect day. Let us be more modest in our display of omniscience. It is better to stick to the fundamentals and the sureties, and let some other things rest.
Continuous work with insufficient nourishment will inevitably result in weakened vitality with loss of strength and vigor. Feebleness will be the ultimate outcome. No less true is this in the spiritual realm.
You don't blame the doctor that brought the baby into the world for ailments that come to the child later through undernourishment, lack of care, or wrong food. Let us remember that the evangelist who brings a convert into the church isn't necessarily to blame for all the subsequent developments that may arise. He hasn't control over all circumstances of life.
The method of the modernists is to accept as inspired and authoritative only those parts of the Bible which their own wisdom and reason approve, discarding the rest. But if the Bible is unreliable in some portions, then by the same token it may be unreliable in all other parts. Thus the authority and integrity of the Bible are gone. With us, it is either all or nothing. And, thank God, it is all.
We sometimes hear the expression made in defense of a worker, " But he brings people into the truth." Just what does that mean? Is it simply intellectual assent to denominational interpretation of prophecy? acceptance of our recognized doctrines, and yet possessed by a cold, critical, unconverted spirit? Truth is inseparable from Christ. He is the truth. The doctrines of truth can never be rightly separated from Him. It is not too much to say that no man has been brought into the truth until his life has been vitally connected with Christ.
In the titanic battle between the hosts of evil and the forces of righteousness, carnal weapons are of little avail. It is the Holy Spirit we need.
L. E. F.
