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October 27, 1909. THE PRESBYTERIAN
Contributed
A CHILD'S PETITION.
Oh, fill me with the knowledge of thy will
This day, my Father;
That thus thy blessed purpose I may fill
And walk in wisdom's way.
Oh, let me be well pleasing unto thee
To-day, my Father;
f Nor may I ever grieve the Christ who died
AnH rnuo fnr mo
Nor from him go astray.
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Fruitful may I be, in lowliest deeds
Of mercy and of love;
And, as my earthly hours so swiftly flee,
As shadows of the night,
Oh, may I learn to^cuow thee well, my God?
Treading the upward path
That holy men of old have trod?
That upward, "shining way,
That shineth more and more
Unto the perfect day."
?Katharine Lampton Paxeon.
Washington, Mo.
HOW CAN THE MINISTRY BE RECRUITED?
By Rev. A. M. Fraser, D. D.
Christ gives us one answer to this question in most
unmistakable language. "Pray ye therefore the Lord
of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into
his harvest." What a profound satisfaction it is to
have any one duty And opportunity of life defined for
us so clearly and with so much certainty! How violent,
almost explosive, is the response of the Lordforeshadowed
in that command! "He will send forth
laborers." Some read it "He will thrust forth laborers,"
and some read it more strongly yet, "He will
hurl forth laborers." It was so he forced out Moses
from his seclusion, and Gideon from his hiding, and
Jeremiah from his diffidence. If we need anything to
fortify the Word of the Lord, the actual experience
of the Church supplies it. Whenever the number of
candidates runs low, we become alarmed, and the
springs df prayer :are started all over the Church. At
once tne numDer begins to increase. .But do we not
too easily become satisfied and restrain prayer and
allow the number to recede again?
Rut not only should we pray a general prayer of
that sort, that the Lord would send forth laborers, we
may make specific prayers for individuals, that the
Lord would send forth particular persons to become
laborers in the harvest. It must be confessed that
the warrant for this in the Bible is not so explicit. But
there can only be one objection raised to it and that
objection is raised. The objection is that it is the prerogative
of God to call men into the ministry, and it
is a piece of presumption on the part of? oifl man to
ask God to put another into the ministry, when he
does not know that God has called him. Therti are
two answers to the objection:
First, the same sort of an argument would prove
that we ought not to pray for the conversion of any
individual. Conversion is the prerogative of God, for
none but God can convert a soul. And God himself
elects or chooses the individuals who are to be conH
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OF THE SOUTH. 5
verted, but that does not prevent one praying for the
conversion of any individual.
Second. Whatever it is we pray for, we ought te
say, "If it be thy holy will." If, therefore, we pray
that some particular young man friend of ours may
become a minister and always add, "If it be thy holy
will," we have not trespassed upon any ground that
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nds icscrvcu exclusively tor mmseit.
Here again a gracious experience conies to strengthen
our conclusion. How many ministers there are
today and how many there have been in all generations
of the Church who have been dedicated to the
ministry from their birth! Take a few concrete cases.
A young man went home from a missionary meeting
with a great hope and a great joy contending for mastery
in his heart. His hope was that he might be
honored of God to be a worker in the foreign field.
His fear was that it might break his mother's heart,
for he was "the only son of his mother, and she was
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a wiuuw. imagine now nope and tear were forced
into joy when the mother met his secret with a
counter secret?she had dedicated him to missions in
his infancy. For many years now the Lord has been
putting the seal of his approval on his ministry in a
foreign land.
Another youth returned to his home from a young
people's missionary convention and reported to his
mother that he had volunteered for mission work in
Africa. He then learned for the first time that his
mother had dedicated him to mission work in Africa
when he was a babe in her arms.
The Missionary for October copies from the Baptist
Missionary Magazine an incident from the life of Dr.
Jacob Chamberlain that is the counterpart of these
two. It is as follows: "At his birth, in 1835, his mother
consecrated him her eldest son, to the work of Foreign
Missions, so far as her influence should be able
to accomplish it. Her son knew nothing of this and
though he grew up with a deep interest in missions,
did not offer himself for service until about the com
pletion of his education."
We are all familiar with Dr. Paton's beautiful description
of his father's place of prayer in their humble
Scottish home, and his own belief that his thrilling
life was rooted in his father's closet. It was not an
accident that the parent's prayers coincided with the
election of God in thus producing two of the most
remarkable missionaries of this age.
But while much of the responsibility is in the hands
of parents, it is not all there. The minister, the Sunday-school
teacher, a consecrated elder or private
member, man or woman, can do a great deal, by
watchini?"t'h#? vnilth of thp f'hnrpli colprtinrr nart^iilor
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ones as subjects of prayer, and by engaging the
prayers of others to the same end.
Another way by which we can get candidates for
the ministry is to follow up the prayers by a tactful
and prayerful suggestion to the person. Parents
can not do this so well, because the
child has profound regard for the judgment
and wishes of his parents that there is danger
of his mistaking the parental suggestion for
the call of God. But some one else may do it. A word