Our Ministers
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not be eyeservants and seek to please themselves, but will consecrate
themselves and all their interests to this solemn work.
Some in their public labors with the churches are in danger of
making mistakes from a lack of thoroughness. It is for their own
interest and that of the cause that they should search closely, try their
motives, and be certain to divest themselves of selfishness. They
should watch lest, while they preach straight truths to others, they fail
to live by the same rule, and allow Satan to substitute something else
for the deep heartwork. They should be thorough with themselves and
with the cause of God lest they work for wages and lose sight of the
important and exalted character of the work. They should not let self
rule instead of Jesus, and they should be careful not to say to the sinner
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in Zion, It shall be well with thee, when God has pronounced a curse
upon him.
Ministers must arouse and manifest a life, zeal, and devotion to
which they have for quite a length of time been almost strangers be-
cause they have failed to walk with God. The cause of God in many
places is not improving. Soul work is needed. The people are over-
charged with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life.
They are entering deeper and deeper into a spirit of worldly enterprise.
They are ambitious to get gain. Spirituality and devotion are rare. The
spirit that prevails is to work, to accumulate, and to add to that which
they already possess. “What will be the end of these things?” was the
burden of my inquiry.
Conference meetings have accomplished no lasting good. Those
who attend the meetings carry a spirit of traffic with them. Ministers
and people frequently bring their merchandise to these large gatherings,
and the truths spoken from the desk fail to impress the heart. The sword
of the Spirit, the word of God, fails to do its office work; it falls tamely
upon the hearers. The exalted work of God is made to connect too
closely with common things.
The ministers must be converted before they can strengthen their
brethren. They should not preach themselves, but Christ and His
righteousness. A reformation is needed among the people, but it
should first begin its purifying work with the ministers. They are
watchmen upon the walls of Zion, to sound the note of warning to the
careless, the unsuspecting; also to portray the fate of the hypocrite in
Zion. It seemed to me that some of the ministers had forgotten that