The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-02-16

energy in this city to bring all the
United States to ~Christ-enough Of un-
developed Christian energy in the
United States to bring the whole world
to Christ, but it is buried under strata
of indifference and under whole DUN
tains 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 fur
naces and be turned into howitzers
and carbines for the Lords host?
USELESS CHRISTIANS.
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
metal is under the hills. Oh, is it 10
time for the church Of God to u
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 SOL
diers gave { Butcher, the command
er. They called him DC Forwards"
We have lar enough retreats in the
church of Christ; let US have a glori-
Gus advance. And / say to you as the
general said when his roops were af-
frighted-rising up in his stirrups, his
hair flying in the wind, he lifted up his
voice until 20, 900 troops heard him cry
Al4S Jul IOI W Ill Is liz FAANlC AAC We
want all the laymen enlisted. Ministers
are numerically too small. They do the
beSc they can They are the most over
worked class on earth. Many of them
die Of dyspepsia because they cannot
get the right kin Of food to eat, or,
getting the right kind, are so worried
that they take 1T down in chunck. They
die from early and late exposure.
If a novelist or a historian publishes
one book a year, he is considered in
~dustrious, but every faithful pastor
must originate enough thought for
three or four volumes a year. Minis
terS receive enough calls in a year
from men who have maps and medi-
cines and lightning rods and pictures
to sell TO xhaust their vitality. They
are bored with agents of all sorts. They
are set in drafts at funerals and pois-
oned by the unventilated rooms of in
valids and waited upon by committees
who want addresses made until life
becomes a burden TO bear. 1t is not
hard study that make ministers look
pale. 1t is the infinfty of Interruptions
and deliberations Ito which they are
subjected. Numerically too small, 1t
is no more THE work of he 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 as on mine.
LGI us quit InlS SrdnO farce OIL trying
to save the world by a few clergymen,
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 on a prayer meeting if the min>
lister is not there, when there ought to
be enough pent up energy and relf-
gious force to make a meeting go on
with &c 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 fountains from which
might be dipped up the waters of eter-
nal life. Before you and I lave the sod
pressing our eyelids we will, under
God, decide whether our children shall
grow up amid the accused surround
ings of vice and shame or come to an
inheritance of, righteousness. Long.
loud. bitter, will be the curse that
scorches Il grave if holding within
the church today enough men and wo-
men to save the city we act the cow-
ard or h drone. 1 wish L could put
enough moral explosives under the con
v~entionalities and majestic ~stupidities
of the day to blow them to atoms and
that then. with 80. 900 men and women
from all the churches knowing nothing
but Christ and a desire to bring all the
world to him. we might move upOn the
enemy's works. For a little while
HEAVIER you not have trumpets
enough TO celebrate the victories.
THE WORLDS GRINDSTONES.
Again. 1 learn from this subject that
we sometimes do we'll to take advant-
age of the worlds grindstOnes. These
ISraeliteS were due 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 l read at the beginning of the
servic-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 Philistines to use their
grindStones. My friends, is it no right
for us to employ the worlds grind
stones? If there be art, If there be logic,
if there be business faculty on the 9TH
er side, let us go rel and employ it
for ChriSt's sake. The act is we fight
with too dull weapons and we work
with too dull implements. We hack and
we maui when we ought to make a
clean stroke. Let us go over among
sharp business men and among sharp
literary men and n 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 grindStones. We will listen to
their music, and we will watch their
acumen, and we will use their grind
stones and will borrow their philoso-
phical apparatus to make our expert
mentS, and we will borrow their print
ing presses to publish our Bibles, and
we will borrow their rail trains to car
ry u Christian literature, and We will
borrow their ships to transport our
missionaries. That was what made
Paul such a master in his day. He not
only got all the learning he could gec
of DR.. Gamaliel, but a~fterward, stand
ing on Mars hill and in crowded thor
oughfare. quoted their poetry and
graSped their logic and welded their
%eloquence and employed their mythoi-
ogy until Dionysius the Areopagite,
learned in the schools of Athens and
Heliopolis, went down under his ire
mendou powers.
That was what gave Thomas Chal-