TO LAZY MINISTERS by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, May 12, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 19

TO LAZY MINISTERS.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Are there really any lazy, indolent ministers? Alas! yes, plenty of them. It is easier for a minister to fall into indolent habits than for a person in any other calling. Others have to work hard or starve; be prompt and put in full time or lose their place; work with all their might and tact or fail. But the minister is left more to his own ways; to arise when he gets ready, to put in his appointments thick or thin, to read or write, to visit much or little, just as he feels. If little is accomplished, it is easy to lay it to the Devil, to hard hearts, to the unpopular truth, etc.; but the judgment will show that it was his own indolence that was the trouble.

Bishop Simpson well said: “The approbation of Christ on human efforts was given in the words, ‘She hath done what she could;’ and when a minister does all he can,—when he brings his all of strength, and study, and skill, and tact, and prayer,—when he has exhausted all the resources which God hath put in him, then divine power accomplishes the rest. But if the preacher expects divine power to supplement his indolence in the study, his waste of time in frivolous conversation, his hours spent in amusements, his waste of opportunities and energies, no wonder that he shall be disappointed. To him the divine voice is: ‘Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully.’ He is Ananias holding back part of the price.”—Lectures on Preaching, pp. 212, 213.

Of all men who should be on fire with zeal and energy in his work, the minister, who has eternal destinies in his hands, should be first.

D. M. CANRIGHT.