Baptist minister

“ The authority of a Presbyterian church is limited to the bounds of its own denomination. It cannot ordain ministers for Baptist churches, any more than it can ordain them for Methodist churches or for Episcopal churches. When a Presbyterian minister becomes a Baptist, his motives for making the change and the conformity of his views to the New Testament standard need to be scrutinized by Baptists, before they can admit him to their Christian and church fellowship ”

“ It is unnecessary to observe that, in a contest of this nature between an individual Baptist minister and the whole Catholic Church, the church, notwithstanding her rather formidable array of theologians and philosophers, gets decidedly the worst of the battle. ”

“ Miss Bray heard.
But the Baptist minister don't let you sleep on his Sunday. He used to try to make the girls come up and profess, but now he don't ask even that. Just sit where you are and hold up your hand, and when you join the church—any church will answer—you are saved. ”

“ The Baptist house was crowded every Sunday, while ours was thin and discouraging. We had a good old gentleman for a minister, but he was over seventy, and a married man besides, which kept the women from taking much interest in him; while his old-fashioned notions didn’t suit the young men of the congregation. The Baptists, on the other hand, had a young unmarried preacher, with a voice that you could hear a quarter of a mile off, and a way of giving it to the Jews, and the Mormons, and other safe and distant sinners that filled his hearers with enthusiasm and offended nobody. ”

“ I had no apostle or prophet to teach me the right way; so I had to do the best I could. In my zeal to promote {29} good, I got up prayer meetings in our village and prayed for light and knowledge. It was my desire to receive the ordinances of the gospel, as I could plainly see by reading the Bible that baptism by immersion was a sacred ordinance. In my eagerness, yet being ignorant of the holy priesthood and of the true authority to officiate in the ordinances of eternal life, I requested the Baptist minister to baptize me. ”

“ And yet he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. The least gospel minister, that has obtained mercy of the Lord to be skilful and faithful in his work, or the meanest of the apostles and first preachers of the gospel, being employed under a more excellent dispensation, are in a more honourable office than John Baptist. The meanest of those that follow the Lamb far excel the greatest of those that went before him. Those therefore who live under the gospel dispensation have so much the more to answer for. ”

“ There cannot be much change while the present generation of ignorant preachers survives; but the changes recently have all been for the better, and a new Baptist organization has just been started among the people themselves with no outside persuasion, with the avowed purpose of securing an educated minister and maintaining better discipline. ”

“ He magnified their office; obeying the apostolic injunction, he "esteemed them very highly, in love for their work's sake." In his conduct towards his own minister [Pg 81] he was a model of excellence; the whole of that conduct being studiously regulated by the most Christian principle and benevolence.
His inclination, especially during the last few years of his life, to be wholly devoted to the work of the ministry, was sometimes exceedingly strong. Had he been permitted to select his own employment, doubtless he would have chosen that of an ambassador of peace. ”

“ With all the consequence and arrogance which assumed infallibility can induce, he maintains that none ought to be teachers of religion but those who are authorized, or otherwise specially inspired of God. According to his definition, an authorized minister is one who has passed through the ordeal of episcopal ordination, and what constitutes that authority is, the regular succession [Pg 92] from the times of the apostles to the present period. ”

“ Any group of baptized believers of not less than four, moreover, may exercise the liberty of organizing a church under the direction of a regularly ordained minister of the denomination and ordination in the Baptist Church is not a difficulty. ”

“ The Baptist preacher is forbidden to say anything about baptism, and the Methodist can’t allude to falling from grace in a union meeting. This is supposed to keep things peaceful and to avoid arguments and throwing of hymn-books and such-like proceedings, which would otherwise be inevitable.
“The union meetings had been in progress for three or four nights when I looked into the Presbyterian church, where they were held one evening, just to see how the thing was drawing. All the ministers in town, except the Episcopalian minister, were sitting on the platform waiting their cues. ”

“ Thus, too, he will be able to make each and every one of them understand all that is necessary for them to believe, and know, and do, in order to be good Christians. All this should be done before baptism is conferred upon them; and like efforts should be made that no one shall die without the sacrament. When the minister undertakes to baptize them, he must see that they know well what it is, and are prepared for it, and understand what they are receiving—namely, that they are dead to their past life, and are commencing a new one, and from that time forth are new men. ”

“ But oh the pity! that money given by godly men to provide preachers of the gospel should be devoted to undermining the Christian cause!
What is the effect of this method of interpretation upon the churches of our denomination? It is to cut the tap-root of their strength, and to imperil their very existence. Baptist churches are founded upon Scripture. Their doctrine of regenerate church-membership, and of church ordinances as belonging only to believers, presupposes an authoritative rule of faith and practice in the New Testament. ”

“ And this is the law of success in the Christian ministry—that highest work of philanthropy. Every {157} right-minded and heaven-commissioned minister of religion is "baptized with the baptism wherewith his Lord was baptized." In an inferior, yet a real sense, he is, like his Lord, a vicarious person, and has freely undergone a suretyship for the immortal welfare of his fellow-men. He has charged himself with a responsibility that can never be absolutely acquitted while any power of exertion or faculty of endurance is held back from the service. ”

“ The Missionary Baptists are by far the most enterprising in all that pertains to the spread of Christianity. They are the most numerous, most wealthy, best educated, and most liberal. In translating the Bible into all languages, in carrying it into all lands, and in sending the gospel to all nations, they have made some amends for that unrelenting bitterness which they have shown toward our brethren from the first day till now. We shall glance at what has hitherto been their order by making certain extracts from the Central Baptist, published in the year 1870. ”

“ And most wisely, and most truly, does our Church separate ordination from the two Christian sacraments, as an institution far less solemn, and conferring graces far less important: for the difference between a Christian and a Christian minister is but one of office, not of moral or spiritual advancement, not of greater or less nearness to God. One is our master, even Christ; and all we are brethren. Words which certainly do not imply that all members of the church are to have the same office, or that all offices are of equal importance and dignity ”

“ The argument for a learned ministry is doubtless a weighty one; but it does not suffice to prove that when college-bred men are not to be had it is better that the people have no minister at all. There is virtue in the rule of ministerial parity; but it should not be allowed to hinder the church from employing in humbler spiritual functions men who fall below the prescribed standard. This the church, in course of time, discovered, and instituted a "minor order" of ministers, under the title of colporteurs. ”

“ Ministers are warned that they must attend to their own business, which is preaching the Word of God not so concretely or practically as to offend the “pillars.”
Just what is it, I wonder, that a minister may preach without hazarding his job? It is said persistently that the trouble with the church at the present day is that the ministers no longer preach the Word of God; that if Christian Truth were again taught with the old vigor, people would hear it gladly. ”

“ The Christian Advocate, of New York, the leading journal of American Methodists, said: “The regular Baptist churches in the [p. 127] United States may be considered today as particularly a unit on three points—the non-use of infant baptism, the immersion of believers only upon a profession of faith, and the administration of the holy communion to such only as have been immersed by ministers holding these views. In our opinion the Baptist Church owes its amazing prosperity largely to its adherence to these views. ”

“ Bishop Ames all houses of worship belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in which a loyal minister who has been appointed by a loyal Bishop of said Church does not officiate. It is a matter of great importance to the Government, in its efforts to restore tranquillity to the community and peace to the nation, that Christian ministers should, by precept and example, support and foster the loyal sentiments of the people. ”

“ During this as well as many other meetings for worship, I sat under religious exercise, but could seldom believe it required of me to take part in the public ministry. I often think, when many exercised brethren and sisters are present; there would be a danger of interrupting the true gospel order, if all were not careful to wait on the Great Minister of the Sanctuary. If we patiently abide under the rightly baptizing power, what we may apprehend preparing in our hearts for utterance may often be delivered by others, and we only have to say, as it were, Amen. ”

“ The truth is, there is the greatest possible vagueness of belief, or rather opinion, respecting the Christian Ministry, in our times and country especially. There is, perhaps very generally, an indistinct impression, that something is required to make a man “a minister of the Gospel;” ”

“ How many, and what are the Scriptural officers of a Christian church? For a church, being a society, must have not only laws, but officers to execute them. How many orders are there in the ministry? These are questions which have at times greatly divided the Christian world.
Baptists assert that the officers of a church are two,—and of right, can be no more,—pastor and deacons. In this opinion agree some other denominations, while the various Episcopal sects insist that there should be three sets—deacons, priests, and bishops, to which the Church of England adds archbishops. ”

“ Thus the gulf between the rationalizing minister and the congregation tends yearly to diminish through the action of the congregation; and if only both the esoteric and the exoteric interpretation of the Scripture were generally recognized as being compatible with the faithful worship of Christ, I do not see why the minister should not claim for himself, without any sense of constraint or insincerity, the same freedom of interpreting the Bible which is accorded to the laity. ”

“ His argument for the right of the Christian Minister to a temporal maintenance is wholly derived from the analogy of the Jewish Priesthood; this would, then, be no argument, if there were no analogy. His words are, “Do ye not know that they which Minister about holy things, live of the things of the altar? even so hath the Lord ordained, that they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel.” Evidently the former Ministry is assumed to be the pattern of the latter. ”

“ If, therefore, the gospel, which is Christ's, but so that a minister also may call it his in virtue of his office of administering it, can be received by a man even at the hands of an evil minister without danger to himself, if he does according to what he says, and not after the example of what he does, how much more may any one who comes in good faith to Christ receive without fear of contagion from an evil minister the baptism of Christ, which none of the apostles so administered as to dare to call it his own? ”

“ But yet this rather anomalous circumstance, that men who are generally supposed to be somewhat lax, at least, respecting the subject of an authoritative ministry, should also be often thought to give undue prominence to “the Sermon” of a minister, even beyond other means of grace; this, I say, only renders it the more important that we should understand clearly what men mean by a “ministry” in the Church,—what they consider its real powers and chief functions,—and what its special grace and blessing? ”

“ All too often lay people assume that the problems of the ministry and of the church belong to the clergy alone. Many conscientious ministers today, erroneously assuming this responsibility, are confused as to what their role is. The problem of ministerial roles belongs to the whole church. It is not easy in this time of transition for ministers to be sure of what is expected of them. They sense or see clearly that the old images and patterns of the minister of the gospel do not fit the present time, and, therefore, are not safe ones to follow. ”

“ As baptism is as such our entrance into the universal church, and not into a particular; so is ordination to a minister an entrance only on the ministry as such.
2. Yet a man may at once be made a minister in general, and the pastor of this or that church in particular: and in kingdoms wholly inchurched and christian, it is usually fittest so to do; lest many being ordained sine titulo, idleness and poverty of supernumeraries, should corrupt and dishonour the ministry: which was the cause of the old canons in this case. ”