CIRCULAR LETTER, 1874
Elkhorn Baptist Association
An Appeal to Support the SBTS
By C. LewisIn casting about for a subject upon which to address you, it has occurred to us that what we have to present, should be something not only practical, rather than theoretical, but feasible. Our duties in their ultimate results, reach out into the far off future. Our actions in their more immediate results, relate to the present, but our responsibilities are co-extensive with all time for our works follow us, after we have rested from our personal labors. We should be forging the links, every day, of that chain which ultimately is to bind this captive earth to the victorious care of Christ when the Kingdoms this world shall be His.In view of the fact that no man liveth, and no man dieth to himself, and that the great basis of our final judgment is to be, that Christ recognizes as done to him, whatsoever we do to, or for, His people, we can be readily casting up our account day by day. When we may so readily estimate how much Christ has done for us and as easily see how little we have done for him, it should fill us with alarm, at the approaching settlement of our stewardship. Oh! that we all had the prudence of the unjust steward of the parable, without his dishonesty. Let every one of us ask ourselves, in view of the judgment, can it, will it be said of any of us, "they have done what they could." And here we find the key note to all harmonious Christian actions, "what they could," not what was convenient for us, or not very difficult, but what taxes our powers. "If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." And while for the glory set before him, Christ endured the cross, despising the shame, may we not find an incentive in the glory, joy, life, set before us, to lead us to imitate His example. The servant of God, when he would obtain the threshing floor of ARAUNAH, for the site of the house of the Lord, was offered it as a gift, but his answer was, "God forbid that I should offer to him for sacrifice, that which cost me nothing." Brethren, we may look upon these as mere commonplace expressions, but not so will we see them, when the thunders of eternity wake us to look upon our lives, as recorded in those books opened at the judgment. Has it ever been asked by any one of us, "Lord what wilt thou have me to do?" and has there not been even a faint echo saying, "do." Shall the voice of the judge say at the last, "as ye did it," or shall it be, "as ye did it not." A very wise man has said that he could meet any one in argument, who presented reasons why they did not work for Christ, but that the Scripture represented the great body of men, as "beginning with one accord to make excuse," said he, "there is no answering an excuse, for it means, 'I don't want to do it.'"
The great mission of God's people, is to enlighten, and to save the world by the proclamation of the gospel committed to their charge; while there are many other things which are specially commanded, they all radiate from this great center. If we preach the gospel with our mouth, or sustain those who do, or illustrate it in our lives, we are carrying out our Savior's last command, and upon which depend the eternal happiness, or misery of our race, and yet when it comes to the self denial, or the feeling of the cost by which we profess to estimate the value of the gospel, in giving the laborer his hire, there is a want of good faith and moral honesty, based upon excuses offered, as a justification for spending on ourselves, that which we have covenanted
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to give to them, which if exercised in the ordinary business transactions of life, would shut out one from the confidence and respect of the world, and bring upon them the highest censure of the church. And just so in relation to those enterprises which are undertaken to carry the gospel beyond onr own day, and our own individual churches. God sets before us an open door, and bids us enter, or opens up some promised land, and not only bids us go up and possess it, but brings to us the earnest of its glorious fruits. But forsooth, in looking about for an excuse, he who tempted the Savior with Scripture injunctions, supplies us with an excuse (in that injunction to honor our parents) to bury some dead father, or conjures up giant difficulties, which will not be overcome, even by the assurance of those whom God has appointed to lead his people, that we are able to possess the land.Brethren, what do we suffer to resist our desires in temporal matters? "Where there is a will there is a way." Let a man in the fear of God. say "I will," and who can successfully resist him, "He can run through a host, break u bow of steel, leap over a wall." In the language of an able writer, "The whole spirits of the prophets of the Old Testament, and the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles in the new, seem to mark the living New Testament Church as a body, who neither shall need the formal levy of a tithe, nor indeed would be willing to be confined by such a measure, in the glad offerings of its people * * * * As often almost as prophecy opens her lips touching Messiah's reign, the consecration of the world's wealth, is a part of the song "To Him shall be given of the gold of Sheba." "The merchandise of Tyre shall be holiness to the Lord, it shall not be treasured nor laid up." "Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish, first to bring thy sons and daughters from afar, their silver and their gold with them, they shall bring gold and incense, and they shall bring the honor and the glory of the nation." That is, it will be felt that the highest use that can be made of wealth, is to employ it for God, as if the image and superscription of Christ, rather than of Caesar, shall be the hallowed impress, on the very currency of the earth. The teaching of the New Testament is on this same idea, of a grateful and cheerful unmeasured offering. While the consecration is insisted on as, indeed an element of the real Christian life, Jesus will have each Christian to assess himself. Planting him by the cross, while christian love there adores, it is left to answer also the question "How much owest thou, my Lord?" "The lesson of consecration is taught us in the Old Testament, in connection with the lesson of the blood sprinkling. Hence the admonition of the apostle, "ye know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, who though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor." Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, "It is more blessed to give, than to receive." Every where, God the Father and Christ, are set forth as the great givers, and christians are taught, that to give is to be God-like. When the grateful sister can not stop to calculate with the Judas, the value of the costly alabaster vase, in her zeal to have the master honored at the feast, as nobles and great people are honored, Jesus Himself promised an imperishable monument, with an epitaph, written with His own finger, upon it." It is the grateful love in the heart, prompting the offering, which gives it its real value. That it is which makes the widow's mite, more than all the gold of the Indies; and Mary's alabaster box, a more enduring memorial than the temple of Solomon. Hence saith the apostle, 'The Lord loveth a cheerful giver.'" I have quoted these words of another, as being more expressive than any I could use.
And now we profess to apreciate a ministery apt to teach, and qualified to do it. When we call a pastor, we are satisfied with none but an able, and faithful expounder of the word of God, and yet who of us make any sacrifice in preparing them for the work. We either seek to avail ourselves of the labor of others in this direction, or that of some individual, who has grown grey in attaining, by his own assiduous labors, to such acquirements as he might have reached in a few years by proper instruction. We give our hard earned means to qualify men for more worldly pursuits. We pay taxes willingly, to endow common schools, contribute to endow colleges, work to exhaustion to educate our children for the world. But when God presents an
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opportunity to prepare men for His own appointed, commanded work, then we begin to make excuses, and the very feeblest of these is a lock on our pockets, which would defy the most astute burglar, that ever broke into a guarded treasure. Brethren, how much of your earnings have been sowed as seed, for the great harvest of evil? What results of your free will offerings, are to meet you like spectred ghosts, with long and bloody trains, in the long future, and not one friend made of the mammon of unrighteousness, ready to receive you into everlasting habitation. I will not elaborate this further for your reflection, but present the object to which I would lead you.We plead for the seizing of what we believe to be the grandest opportunity ever offered to Kentucky Baptists, to step into the very foremost rank of the great Baptist host, in holding up amidst the world's opposition, the Gospel Banner. God has opened a great and effectual door, and in the voice of His providence, bids us enter.
The wants of our own great land, where every sin and vice, grows and festers, like the rank and poisonous weeds in some filthy pool; the results of false theories of religion, and so called philosophic systems, demand of us, a pure gospel. God has given us the opportunity to establish the very best and foremost, Theological Schools of the world, and to fill our own State, and the whole land, with a ministry teaching a pure theology, and qualified to defend and uphold the truth against any opposition. Shall we not do it? Self denial can overcome every obstacle — shall we not make the necessary sacrifice, and after we are all gathered to our final rest, we shall be, through this institution, preaching to generations yet unborn, who shall rise up and call us blessed. Some think an endowment of three-thousand dollars exhorbitant, and yet every soldier in our army, useless except to serve the Devil, every one, from the general to the lowest private, cost our government one-thousand dollars per year, while we can, with no more than would keep three-hundred soldiers for one year, send out three-hundred preachers yearly, for all time. The Catholics of this country, are aaid to have a yearly fund of over a million and a half dollars, paid cheerfully and willingly, for propagating their faith, and yet some of our people find it not in their hearts, to give one dollar for this great institution, which will put us fully abreast with the errorists of the day, in the number and the ability of our ministry. God has given us teachers of pure gospel sentiments, of self-sacrificing spirits, putting us to shame. They are living in poverty, rather than give up this school, when they might luxuriate in offered affluence, if they would quit the seminary. God be thanked for these men? And may He incline the hearts of His people in Kentucky, to hold up their hands and bless the land with the results of their teaching.
Kentucky Baptists invited the institution, by their delegates in convention, promising to try to raise the necessary money, and Elkhorn Association resolved, last year, that they would endeavor to raise thirty-thousand dollars to endow a school, to be named by the Elkhorn Association. Let us try, and we shall do it. Do not wait to hear the cogent arguments of Boyce, or to have your heart melted, or your eyes filled with tears, by the simple, pathetic and perspicuous preaching, of the beloved Broadus, but now, for God's sake, for the sake of the rising ministry, for the peace of your own hearts, for the sake of unborn millions of immortals, soon to crowd our land. In view of all the wants of the present, and of the vast future, as promotive of the coining glory of Christ, and the display of that glory to principalities and powers, in the eternity to come, put your hands to the work, and make the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary a success.
=========== [Scanned and formatted from the original document at Elkhorn Baptist Association office, Lexington, KY; 1874, pp. 10-12. The Title is added. — Jim Duvall.]
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