221
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
April 1927
*------ 1—:— ----------------s§ POINTERS FOR PREACHERS | * -------- ----------------------- ------- * HILLY SUNDAY was at aminister -u friend’s home, and was thinking of something to ask his host’s^ littk girl. “Ethel,” Said Billy with a twinkle in his eye, “does your papa ever preach the samesermon twice ?” “Yes, Mr. Sun day,” seriously answered Ethel. “I think he does, but he hollers in different places.” Read these words from George Muller: “Sixty-two years ago I preached a poor,, dry, barren sermon, with no comfort to myself, and, as I imagined, with no com fort to others. But a long time afterward I heard of nineteen distinct cases of bless ings by that sermon. — 0 — A wise hearer once said to his young pastor, “You start off so suddenly with your sermon that you snapped the coupling instead of starting the train.’-’ Announce your text distinctly, even repeatedly. The people are settling themselves to hear. If you are too abrupt they may miss the text entirely. ——O—— The preacher should respect his pulpit. It is where he stands to speak for God, where God authenticates His servant. It is the place where heaven and earth fiieet. It should be entered reverently, but not wit,h ostentatious devotion. It is no ,place for a mountebank, an actor, or even an entertainer. It is at home only to an ambassador of the most high God.— James I. Vance, DJD. One might think from the words of Daniel Webster concerning preachers that he lived in 1926. “If clergymen would return to the simplicity of the Gospel,” he wrote, “and preach more to individ uals and less to the crowd, there would not be so much complaint of the decline of true religion. Many of the ministers of the present day take their texts from Paul and preach -from the newspapers. When they do, so, I prefer to enjoy my own thoughts rather than to listen.” — o — Says Dr. James Black, “The Session- Clerk of an Edinburgh Church used to say that the congregation made it a prac tice to send their minister to the Holy Land after twenty-five years’ ministry,— and then they regretted it for the next twenty-five! When I was in the Holy Land.’ ‘I once saw in Jerusalem.’ T re member in Jericho.’ You can imagine how stale and-wearisome it becomes.”
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*•-----------------------:---------------------------------------------------- f ' S E R M O N G A R N I S H | f ,— --------|---------------------------------v Take the Far Look A fisherman stood on the bluffs above his flooded hut on the coast of England and wondered where' the good was found. But the storm that flooded his hut was the storm that sunk the Spanish Armada in the depths of the sea and saved Eng land from the terrors of a Spanish in quisition, with its tortures and death. The fisherman’s hut was flooded, but his country and kindred and his own life were saved, Had the fisherman, known then he would not have wondered, nor have com plained. The fisherman had need of faith. Faith talks of Now and of Hereafter and exclaims,; “All for good !” ■ — O— Illumined From Within The night wraps her mantle of darkness around the three disciples who”are in the mount with Christ, and the last'sight is of the meek and lowly Son of Man bend ing in prayer to His Father. Later they awake/'and find1that the mountain-top is crowned with light ; not with the light of the rising sun, fpr it. is still, the dark ness of the night, but they .¡look and see our Lord Jesus, their dear Redeemer, illumined from within. They:behold and see Him with the beams of His. Godhead breaking through the veil of flesh. Luke saysr His raiment was white and glister ing,- sparkling like the hoarfrost,.-so white as no fuller on earth could white: it. And not only was this so,- but His countenance was as the sun shining in its strength, and over all was the cloud of the Lord, the Shekinah Cloud, the s y mb o l of Jehovah’s presence, and on each side of the dear Redeemer, manifesting thus His glory, there was Moses and there was Elias speaking with Him of the exodus, or decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem. Our Lord did not shme here with a reflected glory, but with His own glory. He shone with the glory which He had with the Father before the world began. We too may be ‘radiant (Esa. 34:5) by “looking unto Him,” but we have ever to remember that ours are borrowed rays, reflected only as we .keep in range with Him. — o— Have You Mastered Psa. 39:17 S. Baring-Gould tells the story of S. Pambo, a famous old ascetic who lived toward the end of the 4th Century: “Not being learned in letters, Pambo sought a man who could read, to teach him the Psalter. His friend began with the first verse of the 39th Psalm: ‘I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not with my tongue.’ “ ‘That will do for today,’ said Pambo, and went his way. He did not return for six months, and was chidden. “ ‘It is hard to learn that one verse,’ answered Pambo; ‘I have not mastered it yet,’ Many years after someone asked him about that verse. It has taken me 19 years to learn it, and I am not perfect in it yet,’ he replied.”
Gates to Hell Martin Luther once -said: “I am much afraid the universities will prove to be the great gates to hell, unless they diligently la bor to explain the Holy Scrip tures and engrave them upon the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign para mount. Every institution in which men are not unceasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt.”
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