(In my first visit to South Africa, in 1915, during the first world war, I met Pastor P. Smailles, an earnest evangelist who now rests from his labors. His field of service in the Cape Province took in the land of the Kaffirs. He often worked among the Kaffir people, using an interpreter. He told me this incident:
"One day I had been preaching the message to the people in the Kaffir kraals. They listened with earnest attention to the appeal I made to give their hearts to Christ. My interpreter was doing his best. But a head man said to me, 'Your words are hot; but your interpreter's words are cold. Learn Kaffir!' "
The Kaffir chief's appeal to have the food for their hearts served warm reminds me of the lesson given us in the first of all the testimonies in the printed series of Testimonies for the Church. It was written in 1855 and says:
"The servants of the Lord have trusted too much to the strength of argument. . . I saw that the mere argument of the truth will not move souls to take a stand with the remnant; for the truth is unpopular. The servants of God must have the truth in the soul. Said the angel, 'They must get it warm from glory, carry it [warm] in their bosoms, and pour it out in the warmth and earnestness of the soul to those that hear.' A few that are conscientious are ready to decide from the weight of evidence; but it is impossible to move many with a mere theory of the truth. There must he a power to attend the truth, a living testimony to move them."—Testimonies, vol. 1, (no. 1), p. 113.
It is perhaps significant that this word of the angel was set down in number one. To minister warm spiritual food to the hearers means, surely, that the preacher himself comes to the pulpit every time with a new experience in Christ's saving grace—his own heart warmed with a sense of the love of God for him a sinner, and a new experience in the forgiving, cleansing, keeping power in Christ Jesus.
In a special way, just now, the Saviour speaks from heaven for this time:
"Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord bath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing." Matt. 24:44-46.
And the food in due season, as the Kaffir chieftain realized, ought not to be cold food. It must be ministered by words "warm from glory," as the angel said, and be set warm before the hearers.
