THE KING’S BUSINESS
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had lost the sense of perspective. He would go down to the village into one man’s store and write sortie letters on this man’s paper; then he would go to another store and write more let ters on that man’s paper; then would come the whistle of the train and he would fairly fly for his life to the de pot to get his letters mailed. One day when he was preaching he said, “What more can I do than I am doing One practical layman said, “I don’t know, unless you should meet all the freight trains, too, to mail your letters.” The world won’t follow a man like that. We are not to lose the sense of perspective. And as students of that same great Gospel we are to watch with uncompromising diligence that we do not waste our time. Over the failure of many a preacher you might write two little words, - “He dawdled.” COMMERCIALISM. The preacher has to watch against the temptation to commercialism. 1 tell you, my brothers, this love of money stirs many a strange fever in men’s blood and the very atmosphere of it is powerful. That preacher who is swept on by the love of money has admitted a deadly microbe into his deepest soul that will overturn his ministry. We can do better than to put these supreme energies of our God-sent lives into our passion, into our hurry, into our effort to pile up material things. The temptation there to us all is very great, for we have our families, we have our children. O, my brothers, the preacher who is swept aside and infected with this vice of commercialism, from that hour he is a Samson with his locks shorn. We must put some things, Christ’s things, above the money-loving spirit. Then we must watch, and constant ly watch also, against professionalism. How we are tempted to be profes- sionalists; how We are tempted to
lege. Make these football men who lack religion, respect you because you pay the price to be men, leaders of thought in the community in which you live.” Now the preacher is all along called upon to watch with all diligence and prayerfulness as to his habits and mo tives. I dare say that the preacher is the most tempted man in the world. The Devil has a grudge against the true preacher. He has it in for the true preacher. The sorry preacher does not trouble him much, but the true preacher must be a constant ani mus to that Evil One who seeks to torment and destroy, and therefore the preacher must watch with all diliT gence his habits and his motives; must watch with patient persistence and prayerfulness the very secrets of his deepest life. PREACHERS’ TEMPTATIONS. There are certain great temptations to the preacher. For one thing he is tempted to be idle. And what a mis erable fault is idleness anywhere, and most of all in a prophet of God. Oh, I don’t mean that he will go off and sleep all day, though sometimes I think he may do that—I mean he loses the proper sense of perspective. I mean he will put a big amount of time on lit tle inconsequential tasks. What an in congruity for an elephant to waste all his days picking up jpins*! What an in congruity for God’s prophet to spend all his energies on little inconsequen tial nothings. If he does not watch the little places, the morning will get away as he putters here and there doing real ly nothing. What a sin is tha t! What a sin is that! We are to be more than putterers running around here and there. We are to be men of concen tration and definiteness who get the deep things that preachers ought to have, to voice them into the ears of a needy world. I heard of one such preacher who
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