IT is one thing for a man to say he is for the Bible, the whole Bible and nothing but the Bible, and it is quite another thing to learn and practice some of the first and clearest lessons of the Bible. The only authority there is in the Bible for preaching the gospel at all, requires that it be preached in all the world—to every creature. Yet, strange to say, the first thing many seem to think of, and the only thing, is the mere vicinity where they reside. They are frequently few, weak and uninfluential; can get no preacher to their vicinity; or if they do get one once in a great while, they entertain him with an account of their weakness and inability to pay, make him sacrifice more to preach for them than they all sacrifice to support him. In other words, if they ought to give him thirty dollars, by a hard stretch they raise fifteen dollars, and send him off fifteen dollars minus what he ought to have had. After thus disheartening him, breaking him down and starving him, or especially his wife and children, they comment upon the old adage, “charity begins at home.”
Declaim against foreign missions, and prepare to give the State Board twenty-five dollars if the Board will send them one hundred dollars worth of preaching. After they treat a preacher in this way a few times, he is compelled from absolute necessity to abandon them. Thus, isolated, forsaken and helpless, they take no publications, know nothing of what is going on, pine away and die. This shows the utter fallacy of little, weak and helpless congregations keeping themselves isolated. They should act with their brethren, report themselves, be known in all their efforts, and send in their contributions, no matter how small. The ground of complaint here is, however, more on the part of preachers than any place else. In all our preaching, we should inculcate a missionary spirit, the importance of acting in harmony, unitedly and with energy in all our undertakings to evangelize the world.