Down in Nashville, where I come from, they tell a tale of one of the pioneer preachers, Brother Gwin. Craggy old monuments of righteousness were some of those circuit riders and itinerant preachers who turned the wilderness freedoni into the shouting channels of religion. Not much of schooling, even less of polish, had they with which to storm the heights of Jebus; but they feared the face of no man, they wielded the sword of the Spirit like lightning, and they struck with vigor the strings of Zion's harp.
Brother Gwin was of the type. Gnarled and knobby, his smooth-shaven face was dominated by burning blue eyes, and his hammer fist smote home the truth, as he saw it, of a heaven to win and a hell to shun. Not many books had the old Covenanter; the one Book he had he wore out as much by pounding as by expounding. But he was a terror to the evildoer, a refuge to the penitent, and a joy to the saved.
In time, there came upon the scene of the progressive West younger preachers, who had received their training in theological schools, and who made so much of preparation that they often missed the battle. One day one of these sproutlings, who had gazed with wonder and some envy upon the prowess of the older warrior, said to him, "Brother Gwin, how is it that you seem always prepared to dO battle for the Lord? I never see you read a book, except the Bible, and yet in doctrine and in fire you are always at the front."
"Oh, my son," replied the old man, "you don't understand. You young fellas have to read a heap o' books to get some ideas to preach about ; but I know what's in the books before they're written !"
Now, having chosen for my title a passage from Paul, slightly altered in form but intact in meaning (2 Tim. 4:13), I seem to be going away from it when I give Brother Gwin's philosophy. But there are some iron rations in the old man's pack, which I think it well to emphasize along with the chocolate bars. If I may assume to be your counselor, I would advise that you know what is in the books before you read them. But read them. As a mountain mother said to her children . in my presence: "Go along down thar to thet school whar ye kin git books. They mought l'arn ye somethin'."
The frontier preacher required an ax to hew out a clearing in the forest of doubt and lawlessness: the modern evangelist is driving a tractor with a wide choice of attachments. He needs to know his mechanics and perhaps his chemistry ; but first he needs the wisdom that comes from long schooling in the physical facts of his farming, which underlay all the inventions of machines.
Nobody in this age of literature and "litterchure" fails to use the art he so laboriously acquired in the "Little Red Schoolhouse." But what we read and how we read and how well we use what we read tell whether, like Brother Gwin, we know in advance the essentials of what is in the books, or whether, like the moppet seated on the floor of the cheap newsstand at the drugstore, we are slobbering over the swill of the world's nonsense. To see a preacher (as I have seen) chuckling over the inane "funnies," is to see a sinner whom Brother Gwin with his gospel ax would chop down. There is a sobriety of mind, a dignity of solid acquirements, a virtue of deep knowledge, that save a man from the frivolities of folly and fit him for absorption of the wisdom of God. Such a man has prepared the soil of his mind to receive, to store, and to use the rich plant food of thinkers and doers.
We Adventists are a people with a tradition of study. This great body of integrated truth was not wrought out of apathy and listlessness. The pioneers of this church were men and women who studied. They searched the Word of God together as for hid treasure. The Bible was the foundation of their study. From that they reached out to garner the knowledge that lay in wise men's books; and this they weighed, sifted, ate, digested, and brought forth in new forms.
None of them had a college training, but they had more. They disciplined their minds to hard study, to use of the moment as well as of the untrammeled hour, to wide research and to careful weighing of evidence. And this in the midst of labors so taxing, so unfurnished with aids, so claimant of energies, that in their presence we are put to shame. John N. Andrews learned to 'read, speak, or write in six languages, ancient and modern, and in his researching and writing set a high mark for later students and authors. Joseph H. Waggoner, walking a hundred miles "to find one Laodicean," learned his Greek New Testament on the way. James White, bearing on his shoulders the young church, swamped with business, counselings, militant fighting, took the occasion of his faintness in the pulpit and forced retirement one day for the laying out of the plan for a new book, fruit of his nights of study.
Some of us think of Ellen G. White as the beneficiary of a charismatic gift which, relieving her of study or thought, made her the automatic spokesman of the wisdom of God. On the contrary, she was a woman of prodigious labors, both physical and mental. From her fourth-grade education, where in her girlhood she was forced to leave it, she mounted by the grace of a Spirit-inspired study to the heights of a noted preacher and author, the framer of a gospel of health which has blessed millions, and the setter-forth of a prospectus of Christian education the benefits of which already are unmeasured, and yet which even her people have not wholly grasped nor implemented.
She improved her talents. She read widely and with discrimination; and she came to her reading with a basic understanding, gained from the Bible, of the philosophy of history, the science of philosophy, and the truth of science. In the midst of unexampled labors for the church, she established in her family that reading circle which she recommends to other families. She had her children and her secretary read to her, as she read to them. She was unquestionably favored with visions of earth and heaven, and she, as well as her people, was guided by the counsel of the Holy One; but not least in the gifts of the Spirit to her was the gift of an urge to study, and to shape the fruits of her study into food for the multitudes.
Bring the cloke, Timothy, bring the books, but especially the parchments. On those ancient leathern pages, proof against the ravages of time, let me trace the thoughts of God, and from them frame the skeletal knowledge upon which all my education shall be built. When I have studied the parchments of God's Word, and so have learned the essentials of all that men can teach, bring me the books, that I may widen my sympathies, follow the teachings of God to other men, and speak in their language as the divine oracles shall charge me. And the cloke, let it wrap me from the chill of the world's philosophy.
