The Place of Honor

Why is it that so many professed Christians “feel above” (as the phrase goes) undertaking various labors in the service of the church? Some are unwilling to take a part in the Sabbath-school, strangely forgetting that the blessed Redeemer was a teacher, and that little children were the peculiar objects of His affectionate care. Some hold it to be a piece of condescension to take their places in the church choir, and sing there the praises of Jehovah, just as if it were a dishonor for a poor dying worm to do what the angels of Grod are doing in heaven every hour! Some too will not consent to be distributors of Bibles or tracts among the dwellings of the poor, not remembering that their Master “went about doing good,” that He was himself a colporteur, and a missionary. Others seem to regard a prayer-meeting as a place of humiliation; and so it ought to be in one sense, but not in the sense that they understand it. They consider the lecture-room, or the social prayer circle, ratherquestionable in point of “gentility,” and on the whole better suited for the humble, the obscure, the weak-minded or the illiterate.

Have such never learned that the true post of honor is the post of usefulness? No place is so honorable as the place of duty. Let him who would be the first, be the first in every enterprise of good. Let him who would be accounted worthy of “double honor” aspire to serve well.

Away with the idea that there is anything menial in serving God, and in saving men! The laborer here is a co-worker with the Lord of glory; for Christ himself came not to be ministered unto, but to minister to the wants and woes of others. Every place of usefulness is honorable. “A seat in the Sabbath-school is higher than my seat in the Senate,” once remarked an eminent Christian statesman. The pulpit is loftier than ’ a monarch’s throne to the man who enters it as a faithful ambassador of Christ. Let him “who will be the chiefest, become the servant of all.”