The weekly sentinel. [volume] (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 1886-1887, 1886-10-14

throat and make them bite the dust
If human eloquence were consecrated to the
Lord Jesus Christ it would in a few years
persuade this whole earth to surrender to God.
There is enough undeveloped energy in this
church to bring all Brooklyn to Christ
enough undeveloped Christian energy in the
city of Brooklyn to bring all the United States
to Christ-enough of undeveloped Christian
energy i'll the United States to bring the
whole world to Christ: but it is buried under
strata of Indifference 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 in the furnaces, and
be turned into howitzers and carbines for the
Lords hosts2 The vast majority of Christians
in this day are useless The most of the
Lords battalion belong to 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 Christ's sake, | like the
nickname that the English soldiers gave to
Butcher, the commander. They called him
"Old Forwards" We have had enough re-
treats in the church of Christ; let us have a
glorious advance. And 1 say to you, as the
general said when his troops were affrighted;
rising up in his stirrups, his hair flying in the
wind, he lifted up his voice until 20, 900 troops
heard him crying out: forward, the whole
line!"
We want all the laymen enlisted. Minis
tiers are numerically too small. They do the
best they can. They are the most overworled
class earth. Many of them die of dyspep-
STA because they cannot get the right kind of
food to eat or getting the right kind are SO
worried that they take it down in chunks.
hoy 10 from
early and late exposure. If novelist a
historian publishes one book year he is con-
sidered industrious. But every faithful pas
tor must originate enough thought for three
or four volumes year.
Ministers receive enough calls in year
from men who have maps, and medicines,
and lightning rods, and pictures to sell to ex-
haust 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 COM
mittees who want addresses made, until life
becomes a burden to bear. 1t is not hard
study that makes ministers look pale. 1t is
the infinity of Interruptions and deliberations
to which they subjected. Ii 1 die
before my time, it will be at the
hand of committees that want an address or
a lecture. A man called on me to give him
lecture by which he might pay the expenses
of his wedding trip. If there were fifty
hours in each day of the year, and 1 worked
forty of them, 1 could not do the work of this
one parish, and am not behind most clergy
men in disposition to toll Numerically too
small. 1t is no more the work Of the pulpit
to convert and save the world than
it is the work of the pew. If men
go to ruin there will be as much blood
ON your skirts mine. Let us quit this
grand farce of trying to the world by
few cIergymen, 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 churches are at their
wits end how to carry prayer meeting
if the minister is not there, when there
ought to be enough pent up energy
and religious force to make a meet
ing go with such power that the
minister would never be missed. The church
stands working the pumps of few ministerial
cisterns until the buckets are dry and choked,
while there are thousands OF fountains from
which might be dipped up the waters of
eternal life Before you and have the sod
pressing our eyelids we will, under God, de-
eide whether our children shall grow up amid
the accursed surroundings of vice and shame,
or come to inheritance of righteousness.
Long, loud, bitter will be the curse that
scorches our grave if, holding within
the church to-day enough men and wo-
men to save the city, we act the
coward the drone. I wish 1 could put
enough moral explosives under the conven-
tionalities and majestic stupidities of the day
to blow them to atoms, and that then with
fifty thousand men and women from 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 trumpets
enough to celebrate the victories.
III. Again, l learn from this subject that
we sometimes do well to take advantage Of
the worlds sharpening instruments. These
Israelites reduced to 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 read at the beginning of
the services-that they had no other instru-
ments now with which to do this work, and
the Israelites did right when they went over
to the Phiistines to their grindstones.
My friends, is it not right for us to employ the
worlds grindstones? II there be art, if there
be logic, if there be business faculty on the
other side, let us go over and employ it for
Christs sake. The fact is, we fight with too
dull weapons and we work with too dull inn
plements. We hack and we maui when we
ought to make keen stroke. Let go over
among sharp business men and among sharp
literary men and find out what their tact is,
and then transfer it to the cause of Christ.
If they 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 expert
mentS, and we will borrow their printing
presses to publish our Bibles and we will
borrow their rail trains to carry our Chris
tan literature, and 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 DIR. Gamalisl, but afterward,
standing on Mars hill and in crowded
thoroughfare, quoted their poetry, and