The Revival and After the Revival – Chapter XXIV

To the pastor of such a blessed fold, with the busy, dangerous world outside, the wolf near at hand, and the flock in peril, we say: Use all the spiritual agencies for their protection; feed the little ones with the bread of life taken from the Holy Scriptures; and lead them into green pastures. Consecrate the unoccupied rooms of the church to every-day service. Let the church bell ring seven days in the week. Fill the lecture and class room walls with pictures, arrange tables, file the best religious and secular papers, and bring in high-quality books, charts, maps, and diagrams. “Let the lower lights” of the church always be burning. Let young men find their home; it is always ready. Govern firmly to avoid abuse and lovingly to assure good will and a sense of welcome. Provide courses of literary, scientific, ecclesiastical, and doctrinal lectures. Let music of the highest order entice and educate your youth. Let Christ be the focal point of it all, “the chiefest among the ten thousand,” the “wholly lovely.” Let reverence always reign, even in the outermost courts of the sanctuary; let the atmosphere smother frivolity and foster dignity, holiness, cheerfulness, and refinement. Thus, all the lights of sacred story, secular science, and human thought from the beginning to the end of time will gather around the cross of Christ. The Church will be the center of ten thousand blessed homes, the home of thousands of homeless people, the refuge of the wearied and discouraged, a school of culture for the schoolless, a fountain for the thirsty, a feast for the hungry, a light in the dreary darkness, and the image of the New Jerusalem, with its plenty and peace, its friendship and fellowship, its sinlessness and security—the New Jerusalem, which shall yet come down out of heaven from God. Let us “think on these things.”

By J. H. VINCENT

Updated 2023 Nathan Zipfel