In Nashville but few congregations have full-time preachers, and yet almost all congregations have preaching each Lord's day. Nashville is full of lay preachers - teachers, students, and many who work at some occupation during the week and preach on Sundays. Whether so many preachers constitute a blessing or a curse is one of the unsettled questions, but they certainly contribute their quota to a purely local condition.

Prithee why "unsettled"? We read that some are "Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth," 2 Tim 3:7; but "this sort" is quite a corrupt class. Is this the reason why the question is yet "unsettled" in Nashville? Do they not yet know there that there are millions in this United States that have never heard the gospel of Christ, to say nothing of all the world" Mt 28:19, "every creature" (MK 16:15)? This, and yet they stick to the churches in Nashville as fleas to a dog. The comparison may be "low," but it evidently takes that to reach the case in the mind of the Lord, as Peter estimated (2 Pet 2:22) if his word is our criterion. And this thing has been going on in Nashville for years, each church (rich church) giving a preacher a Lord's day crumb to keep the preachers from fighting. Is this the picture? A persecution is needed in Nashville. (Acts 8:1-4). "I'll have that mouse, says the biggest cat," etc.; but preachers playing the game, each contributing his "quota to a purely local condition" of stagnation in the church. Get out, get out. This may be the way some people talk to their dogs, but we are pleading with preachers who know the gospel of Christ and can tell the sweet story in simple words to dying man, men and women who have but a short time to stay on earth, and afterwards must meet God in judgment, for "It is appointed men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Heb 9:27), and now what are you going to do about it? Care you nothing for the perishing?