Trenchant Truths

Grow or stagnate! There is no alter­native.

L.E.F. is editor of the Ministry

Grow or stagnate! There is no alter­native.

Have faith in our youth. They are as responsive today as any like group in the past. We were all young once.

If we exalt the points wherein we stand on common ground, the points of difference will melt away corre­spondingly.

If the worker's inner life is not in harmony with the outward profession, there is but one word to express the result — hypocrisy.

Any emphasis that minimizes the distinctive features of the message is perilous in its trend. True light sim­ply clothes existing truths with a greater halo.

As we peer into the mists of things still unknown in prophecy or doctrine, our only safety is in keeping our feet firmly on the solid rock of the things that are known, else we may become bewildered and lose our bearings, even perchance plunging over the precipice of profitless speculation to ruin below.

The dimming of the advent hope is the greatest single tragedy that can come into the life of an advent preacher. It vitiates his message. It saps his power. It blights his influ­ence, and it may wreck the souls of some of his hearers. God pity the man who says in his heart, " My Lord de­layeth His coming." And doubly sad the tragedy of utterance of such sentiments with the lips.

Try to get the viewpoint of the man who differs with you, and see what an amazing change it makes in the out­look.

It is poor Christian ethics to build up one's own line or department by depreciating another. Such a pro­cedure is divisive, while sympathetic unity is the basis of all true pros­perity. We must never advance by retarding another phase of the same cause, for our cause is one.

There is no excuse nowadays for an uninformed ministry. Aside from the word, the Testimonies, and our stand­ard periodicals, there are the. Minis­terial Reading Courses, the Fireside courses, and libraries everywhere. And second-hand bookstores take away the last lingering alibi. " Study to show thyself approved."

The charge that some ministers can talk nothing but finance, and can agi­tate nothing but campaigns, is a piti­ful commentary on the spiritual barren­ness of their appeals. No minister is criticized for shearing the sheep, if he feeds them. The sheep expect to be sheared, want it, and feel better for it. Such criticisms ought to startle any minister.

One of our greatest dangers as min­isters is that we shall become content with mere sermonizing, needful activ­ities, or official duties, and so lose the passion for direct, personal soul winning. Yet it is an absolute neces­sity. No indirect service, however laudable, is an acceptable substitute before God. Individual accountability for seeking and finding out souls is nontransferable and unescapable. May God vivify our vision and stir our ardor.                                            

L. E. F.


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L.E.F. is editor of the Ministry

December 1929

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