For years the question of personal work has occupied much of my thought. I have seen students lose out in their studies and otherwise, and drop out of school and into the world, because teachers were too busy to extend a helping hand.
I once spoke to a graduate of one of our schools about using her music in the winning of souls. She was greatly interested, but she said that in her four years in college no one had ever before mentioned such a thing. How teachers could see a fine Seventh-day Adventist young woman go through school, pursuing a passion for music, and then see her enter an outside institution to pursue her chosen subject further, and never individually place before her God's call for the dedication of her talent to His work, I cannot understand.
How an administrator, or a business manager in this cause, can go on year after year and not even make a personal inquiry of his stenographers or office helpers about their courage and hope, and still feel he is a profitable laborer in God's vineyard, is more than I can comprehend.
How physicians and sanitarium managers can be so indifferent to the spiritual welfare of nurses and helpers, who have naturally peculiar temptations, is hard to understand. Personal heart-to-heart contact with the students or workers in an institution is a most effective means of genuine discipline, and of maintaining the high standards for which our institutions are known.
But harder still is it to understand how a man ordained to the gospel ministry can preach sermons and leave the personal pleading with souls to others. Sister White has said that the work of the minister who does this "will not be acceptable to God."—"Gospel Workers," p. 186.
Perhaps one reason why more personal work is not done is because it is naturally difficult; it is surely not the easiest method. In fact, the difficulties of the delivery of the message are in inverse ratio to the size of the audience. There are perhaps ten men who can face a crowd with courage to one who can face an individual.
In relating an experience of his early ministry, J. Wilbur Chapman said he had preached effectively against intemperance, but found it very hard to gain courage to speak to a prominent business man of his congregation who was reported to be drinking; but that God helped him, and he won his man from a life of intemperance.
E. D. Kimball, a Boston Sunday school teacher years ago, found it hard to visit the individuals of his class of young men and personally invite them to accept Christ. So absorbed was he in considering the pros and cons of whether he should enter a shoe store and speak to a certain young clerk, that he went past the store; but he broke the spell of fear that was over him, and retraced his steps. He found the young man in the back of the store, putting shoes in their places, and Dwight L. Moody was won to Jesus Christ. And what a conquest was that! Moody became the greatest evangelist of his generation, and his prime method was that by which he himself was won.
Chapman's singing evangelist, Charles Alexander, said that the Christian worker who is not doing personal work has sin in his life. Perhaps that is putting it too strongly, and yet let everyone search his own heart. Why is it that we sometimes hesitate to speak to the members of our own families? Is it not partly due to the fact that they know of inconsistencies in our lives?
Why does any Christian who has been saved from the horrible pit shrink from reaching out a hand to save others? Perhaps in some cases it is the fear of assuming spiritual superiority. Let not false modesty make us disloyal to the Master. True humility will constrain us to boast in the Lord. At least it would seem that the Christian who hesitates to deliver the Master's invitation hasn't the proper conception of the value of a soul. Sister White has said:
"The value of a soul, who can estimate? Would you know its worth, go to Gethsemane, and there watch with Christ through those hours of anguish, when He sweat as it were great drops of blood. Look upon the Saviour uplifted on the cross. Hear that despairing cry, 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' Look upon the wounded head, the pierced side. the marred feet. Remember that Christ risked all. For our redemption, heaven itself was imperiled. At the foot of the cross, remembering that for one sinner Christ would have laid down His life, you may estimate the value of a soul." —"Christ's Object Lessons." p. 196.
There are some who frankly haven't time to listen to others' troubles. In their way of thinking the message has been given: let the individual accept and take his troubles to God. But such do not understand human nature, nor do they enter into the spirit of the Master, of whom it is written, "A bruised reed will He not break, and a dimly burning wick will He not quench." Isa. 42:3.
There are, of course, here and there individuals who have a sentimental desire to be labored with, and those who seem to delight in telling their troubles without any deep longing for help. Such need to be dealt with tenderly and firmly, but let it be clearly understood that there is real help for burdened souls in sharing their problems. Often when a troubled person begins to explain, the difficulties somehow explain themselves away, and the sky clears. There is a healing balm in Gilead for troubled souls, and the true minister for God is the dispenser of divine remedies.
Washington, D. C.
