Emergency!—Whether we now realize it or not, this message will have to be finished under emergency conditions. Normalcy has departed from the earth, probably never to return. Changes are taking place with almost lightning rapidity. What we have failed to do under favorable circumstances, we shall be compelled to do under most forbidding circumstances. Revolutionary territorial adjustments will throw our conference lines and budgets into confusion. Persecution and repression will hamper free development. Inflation, depression, and financial chaos will harass our operations. Isolation of nation from nation will make our task more difficult to compass. . Increasing exclusion of the European worker from mission lands, and the rising tide of religious and racial intolerance. will constitute the forbidding circumstances under which we shall be compelled to finish our work. Let us face our problem bravely and intelligently. God will use these very circumstances to turn disillusioned souls to Him.
Worshipful!—A concerted effort in behalf of the spirit of worship in our Sabbath services is greatly needed among us. Roaming eyes and the hum of whispered or open conversation while we await the beginning of the service proper, do not comport with either the spirit or the purpose of public assembly in the house of God. Bowing the head in silent prayer upon taking one's allotted seat, and then quietly reading one's Bible, puts the mind and heart in tune with God, shuts out distracting thoughts, and removes the temptation to converse. Quietness and reverence are called for, but are not always characteristic of our services. Let us talk these principles over with our congregations, and bring about a needed reformation here.
Six!—The blinding, stupefying, deadening blight of sin is sometimes reflected in the conduct of ministers who have fallen under the spell of its grosser forms. Instead of exhibiting shame, sorrow, and reticence among their fellows, they are brazen, bold, and forward. It causes them to lose the sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and to comport themselves as if a mistake of intellectual judgment had occurred, instead of a heinous violation of the supreme principles of the moral law of the universe. Some have even contended that they were better fitted to minister to souls because of searing experience. Such fret at and censure mercilessly those who thwart their attempts at restoration to the sacred ministry of the gospel of God, with its soul-searching, sin-condemning, godly, uplifting message. The spotless banner of truth and purity is lowered only at fatal peril to the movement. "Be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord" is our mandate. We must permit only clean bearers of those vessels in our ministerial ranks.
Indefensible!—No individual pastor has the ethical right to impose prohibitory regulations upon the use of the church edifice in which he serves that are contrary either to the general practice or to any specific stand taken by the denomination. We as individual ministers are not sovereign and independent in the control of our respective churches and pulpits. We are servants of the denomination whose credential papers we bear, and our disciplinary and regulatory positions, to be morally and legally obligatory, must harmonize with the controlling body. The church buildings are the property of the conference, not of the local preacher, or even of the local congregation. While pastors come and pastors go, the church remains—and remains the property of the conference. Let us all have a clear understanding of relationships, and not take indefensible, unwise positions.
Differences!--It is imperative that we stick together. It would be easy to pull apart through pressing independently on points upon which there may be legitimate divergence of view. But it is better to mutually refrain from pressing our personal and independent viewpoints—and so preserve a united front to the world and to apostates—than to press our individualistic ideas to the disruption of the church. After all, these points of difference and division are not essentials, either for time or for eternity. Only the fundamentals of salvation are all-important. These alone, and their fruits, will abide through eternity. And upon these, there is essential unity. Some of the details of prophetic interpretations—or speculation—over which much theological blood and ink have been spilled through the years, really have little or no bearing on human salvation, and look pitifully trivial in the light of the historical perspective. Let them fade out of the picture. Let us press together upon essentials, burying and forgetting speculative nonessentials. Let us place our united emphasis upon the salvation of souls, and trivialities will disappear like the morning frost under the noontide glow of truth.
L. E. F.
