Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-11-12

| STATES 10 Drlnp lne "Hole "ollu w Siiai'''
but ii is buried under the strata of indiffer-
cnce. and under whole mountains of sloth.
| Now. is it not time for the mining to begin,
and the pickaxes to plunge, and for this
buried metal to be brought out and put
into the furnaces, and be turned into how
tiers and carbines for the Lords host?
The vast majority of Christians in this day
are useless. The most of the Lords bat
talon belong t. the reserve corps. The
most of the crew are asleep in the ham
mocks. The most of the metal is under
the hills. Oh, is it not time for the Church
of God to rouse up and understand that
we want all the energies, all the talent, and
all the wealth enlisted for Christs sake:
like the nickname that the English SOL
diers gave to Butcher, the commander.
They called him "Old Forwards" We
ha7e had enough retreats in the Church OF
Christi let us have glorious advance.
And say to you, as the general said when
his troops were atfrighted; rising up in his
strrups, his hair flying in the wind, he
lifted up his voice until 2O,On0 troops
heard him, crying: Forward, the whole
line!"
We want all the laymen enlisted. Min
listers are entirely too small. They do the
best they can. They are the most over
worked class on earth. Many of them die
Of dyspepsia, because they cannot get the
lSht kind of food to eat, or, getting the
rsht kind, are so worried that they take it
down in chunks. They die from consump-
ton coming from early and late exposure.
If q novelist or a historian publishes one
booka year he is considered industrious.
But every faithful pastor must originate
enough thought for three or four volumes
year. Ministers receive enough calls in &
year from men who have maps, and medi-
cines, and lightning rods, and pictures to
sell to exhaust their vitality. They are
bored with agents Of all sorts. They are
set in draughts at funerals, and poisoned
by the unventilated rooms Of invalids, and
waited upon by committees who want adj
dresses made until life becomes a burden
to bear 1t is not hard study that makes
ministers look pale. 1t is the infnity of
Interruptions and Deliberations to which
they are subjected. If I die before my
time it will be at the hands of committees
that want an addyess or a lecture. man
called on me 10 give him q lecture by
which he might Pay the expenses of his
wedding trip. If there were fifty hours in
each day of the year, and / worked forty of
them, could not do the work of this one
parish, and I am not behind most clergy
men in disposition to toll. Numerically
pulpit TO convert and save the world than
it is the work of the pew. II men go to
ruin there will be as much blood on your
skirts as Oh mine. Let us quit this farce
of trying to save the world by a few cler-
gymen, and let all hands lay hold of the
work. Give us in all our churches two or
three aroused and qualified men and women
to help. In most churches to-day five or
ten men are compelled to do all the work.
A vast majority of the churches are at their
wits end how to carry on aprayer- meeting
if the minister is not there, when there
ought to be enough pent-up energy
and religious force to make meeting go
on with such power that the minister would
never be missed. The church stands
working the pumps of a few ministerial
cisterns until the buckets are dry and
choked, while there are thousands of foun-
tains from which might be dipped up the
waters of eternal life! Before YOU and
have the sod pressing our eyelids we will,
under God, decide whether our children
shall grow up amid the accursed surround
lngs OF vice and shame, or come to an in
heritance OF righteousness. Long, loud.
bitter, will be the curse that scorches our
grave if, holding within the church to-day
enough men and women to save the city,
We act the coward or the drone. T. wish
could put enough moral explosives under
the conventionalities and moral stupidities
of the day to blow them to atoms, and that
then with SO, G00men and women fl ON all the
churches knowing nothing but Christ, and
desire to bring all the world to Him, we
might move upon the enemy's works. For
a little while heaven would not have trum-
pets enough to celebrate the victory.
,. Again: l learn from this subject that
We sometimes do we'll TO take advantage of
the worlds sharpening instruments. These
lsraelites We're reduced to a file, and SO
they went over to the garrison Of the
Philistines to get their axes, and their
goads, and their plows sharpened. The
Bible distinctly states 1.-THE text which I
read at the beginning OF the service-that
they had no other instruments now with
which to do this work, and the lsraelites
did right when they went over to the
Philistines to use their grindstones. MY
friends, is it not right for us to employ the
worlds grindstones? If there be art, if
there be logic, if there be business faculty
ploy it for Christs sake. The fact is, we
fight with too dull weapons. and we work
with too dull implements. We hack and
we maui when we ought to make keen
strike. Let us go over among sharp bust
ness men, and among sharp literary men,
and find out what their tact is, and then
transfer it to the cause Of Christ. If thew
have science and art it will do us good to
rub against it.
In other words. let us employ the worlds
grindstone. We will listen to their music,
and we will watch their acumen, and we
will use their grindstones; and will borrow
their philosophical apparatus to make our
experiments, and we will borrow their
printing-presses to publish our bibles, and
We will borrow their rail trains to carry our
Christian literature, and we will borrow
their ships to transport our missionaries.
That was what made Paul such master in
his day. He not only got all the learning
he could get Of DR.. Gamaliel. but after
ward, standing on Mars hill, and in crowded
thorouShfare, quoted their poetry, and
grasped their logic, and welded their elo-
quence. and employed their mythology,
until Dionysius the Areopagite, learned in
the schools of Athens and Heliopolis. went
down under his tremendous powers. That
was what gave Thomas Chalmers his
power in his day. He conquered the
worlds astronomy and compelled it
to ring out the wisdom and
greatness of the Lord, until for
the second time the morning stars sang to-
geiher and all the sons of God shouted for
JOY. That was what gave to Jonathan
E1>rn nd &c i,,H,, I,