p. 139 | SERMONS WITH SLINGS IN THEM

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · March 3, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 9

SERMONS WITH SLINGS IN THEM.

“DEACON PLAIN-SPEECH,” writing in the Christian Intelligencer, of the Gloryville church, says: “I don’t want to say anything against the ministers, and least of all, the men who have been giving Gloryville such a treat this year past, whom we have treated so shabbily. Preachers, as a class, are the most intelligent, pure-minded, and self-sacrificing people in the world. And we should be badly enough off without their help in getting through this sad and sinful world. And there’s only one thing, so far as I see, which they can’t do, and that is—preach. What do I mean? Why I mean just this: When David went out against Goliath, suppose he had walked meekly up to the big man, and laying one of the smooth stones in his hand had said, ‘My dear Goliath, oblige me by killing yourself with this,’ what, think you, would have happened to Israel? And what fun it would have been for the Philistines! Instead of that, we all know what the brave little fellow did—how he fixed his eye on the giant, and ran directly towards him; how he put his smooth stone into a sling, and whirling it around and around his head with all his might, let fly as if he meant it, and meant him! and the stone went straight to the armed monster’s vulnerable point, and sinking into his brain, laid him a lifeless heap along the ground. Now tell us whether these smooth little essays, which have been so courteously presented for our consideration, have been anything more than a polite laying the stone in our own hands instead of letting it drive straight for our hearts of sin. I am not objecting so much to the essays. God can make even the smooth stones of the brook achieve greater things than the spear of Saul and Jonathan. But what I want to see is the sling. I want to see the young warrior of the Lord come leaping along the plain with a light in his eye and a shout on his lip, his arm aloft, and his entire body and soul giving vim to the weapon he whirls and aims.”—Sel.