IITGSTOn ^. 
 ^V THSOLOGIGllL/.; 
 
 BV 4525 .S77 1884 
 Stratton, Joseph B. 1815 
 
 1903. 
 Following Christ 
 
FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 A MANUAL FOR CHURCH-MEMBERS. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. JOSEPH b/sTRATTON, D.D., 
 
 Pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Natchez, Miss. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
 
 1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1884, BY 
 
 THE TRUSTEES OF THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION. 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
 
 Westcott & Thomson, 
 Stereotypers and Electroiypers, Philada. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This volume is a companion to one 
 entitled Co7ifessing Christ: A Manual for 
 Inquirers in Religion, published several 
 years ago, and, like that, has been pre- 
 pared mainly in reference to the wants of 
 the author's own congregation. A pastor 
 whose solicitudes for the welfare of his 
 tiock have run parallel with a lifetime may 
 naturally extend those solicitudes beyond 
 the period in which his voice is to be 
 heard, and may find in them a sufficient 
 reason for desiring to leave behind him a 
 legacy of affectionate counsel. The hope 
 that what was designed to be a help to 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 a particular community may also serve as 
 a guide to earnest souls in other commu- 
 nities who are seeking to follow Christ, has 
 led to the offering of this volume to the 
 public. 
 
 Natchez Parsonage, May i, 1884. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Introductory 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 True Conception of Religious Living 14 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Rule of Religious Living 39 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Observance of Public Worship 75 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Private Prayer 93 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The Cultivation of Personal Religion 115 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Religion in the Church 135 
 
 5 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Religion in Secular Life 156 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Religion in the Family 187 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Religion Always and Everywhere 213 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 Conclusion 231 
 
FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTOR Y 
 
 AS the Scriptures employ the phrase 
 L " confessing Christ " to describe the 
 assuming of a rehgious character and Hfe, 
 they very naturally employ the correspond- 
 ing phrase " following Christ " to describe 
 ihe exhibition of such a character and the 
 prosecution of such a life. In adopting re- 
 ligion under the direction of the Bible, a 
 man attaches himself to Christ; in practicing 
 religion under the same direction, he follows 
 Christ. We may be thankful that a proce- 
 dure so critical in its nature, and so momen- 
 tous in its bearings and issues as this latter 
 one must needs be, has been set before us 
 by God in terms so simple and intelligible. 
 Jesus constructed no formal system of 
 
8 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 doctrine and enacted no formal code of 
 moral law, but he comprehended both ni 
 the injunction *' Follow me." Light suf- 
 ficient for the world is concentrated in 
 this single luminous point. 
 
 Every honest person, in embracing a 
 religious character and life, will desire 
 above all things to know what is precise- 
 ly included in the great obligation he has 
 assumed. He will desire this for two 
 reasons: first, that he may be sure that 
 nothing properly belonging to its contents 
 has been overlooked ; and second, that h j 
 may be sure, at the same time, that nothin^r 
 apart from or beyond those contents has 
 been imposed upon him. The position 
 of one who by proper acknowledgments 
 before the authorities of the church, and 
 by a participation in the covenanting ordi- 
 nances of baptism and the Lord's Supper, 
 has just taken the step which attests the 
 faith and avows the purpose of a Christian, 
 must be an unspeakably solemn one to the 
 party concerned; and one which every 
 thoughtful observer will look upon with 
 the profoundest interest and the tenderest 
 
IN TR OD UC rOR Y. 9 
 
 solicitude. If it means what it ought to 
 mean, it presents us with that spectacle of 
 a sinner repenting and turning from his 
 evil ways over which the angels of God 
 rejoice in heaven. It is the return to the 
 Father's house of a wandering prodigal 
 to whom every right-minded " elder son " 
 will be ready to extend a loving welcome. 
 It is the enlistment of a new recruit in the 
 army of Christ — an act which surely should 
 appeal with a pathetic power to the heart 
 of every veteran in that army. 
 
 Young soldier, you have done a brave 
 deed — a deed which many a man who has 
 courage enough to face death on the battle- 
 field does not dare to do. You have dared 
 to confess that your life heretofore has been 
 all wrong, and to determine that in future 
 it shall by God's help be made right. You 
 have dared to change masters, to change 
 principles, to change habits. You have 
 rescued yourself from the thraldom of sin ; 
 you have broken loose from the appetites 
 with which it had enslaved you and the 
 associations with which it had entangled 
 you. You have renounced all other lords 
 
10 FOLLOWING CHJUST. 
 
 which have had dominion over you to bow 
 the knee to Jesus. 
 
 The struggle by which you have done 
 all this may have been great ; the severity 
 of it reveals itself in the sobriety of your 
 manner and the seriousness of your coun- 
 tenance. A deeper shade still gathers 
 over your spirit as you think of the 
 struggles to come — as you contemplate 
 the responsibilities which are involved in 
 the steps which yet lie before you. The 
 apprehension of failure or of defection in 
 the work you have undertaken fills you 
 with alarm. Shall the peace, the hope, the 
 joy, of a new life which are now stirring 
 in your soul be stifled and lost ? Shall the 
 Lord ever have occasion to look upon you 
 as he did upon Peter, and reproach you for 
 your unfaithfulness and treachery ? Shall 
 the friends in Christ to whom you have 
 now joined yourself be constrained in 
 time to come to mourn over your back- 
 sliding ? And shall the unbelieving crowd 
 whom you have professedly abandoned 
 have cause to rejoice over your halting? 
 
 To all such questions you now make the 
 
INTR OD UC TOR Y. 1 1 
 
 almost passionate reply, " God forbid !" 
 The very gravity of your demeanor, the 
 intensity of desire and purpose which kin- 
 dles the very look of your eye, seem to 
 make a mute appeal to others more ad- 
 vanced in Christian life to instruct your 
 ignorance and brace up your feebleness — 
 to tell you, in a word, what you must be 
 and what you must do in order to realize 
 the character you have assumed and the 
 life you have undertaken to enact. 
 
 In the spirit of sympathy with this mute 
 appeal (which in many instances has been 
 addressed to the writer as a spoken one) 
 the following pages have been prepared. 
 In the preparation of them the keynote 
 with which everything will be kept in har- 
 mony is the great comprehensive command, 
 the first (Matt. iv. 19) and the last (John 
 xxi. 22) addressed by Christ to his dis- 
 ciples, "Follow me." It is evidently enough 
 for the disciple that he be " as his Master," 
 and for the servant that he be "as his Lord" 
 (Matt. X. 25). The religion of Christianity 
 requires just this likeness to Christ — all 
 this, and nothing more than this. 
 
12 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 The exposition of this cardinal law 
 of the Christian life, it is hoped, will fur- 
 nish a seasonable aid to that favored class 
 of persons who through God's blessing 
 upon faithful parental training have by 
 imperceptible steps been brought into 
 his kingdom. Divine grace, in the nature 
 of it, is without limitation as to the time 
 and manner of its operation. It is the 
 privilege of all who are themselves in 
 covenant with God to beheve that their 
 offspring may be included with them in 
 the provisions of the covenant. They often 
 give evidence that they are. In such cases 
 the birth of the Spirit has supervened upon 
 the birth of the flesh at so early a day, 
 and by such insensible processes, that the 
 subject has no consciousness of the re- 
 generating change. But the obligations 
 of the Christian life are the same in the 
 case of those who are thus called from 
 the womb as in that of those who are 
 converted in later life. The import of 
 these obligations will present itself to the 
 intelligence of these persons, as well as 
 of others, when the time arrives for them 
 
INTK OD UCTOR Y. 1 3 
 
 to avow their faith in Christ and their 
 consecration to God by a formal union 
 with the Church. To them, as well as 
 to others who have been recalled from 
 the open paths of unbelief and sin, Jesus 
 says, " Follow me." The counsels which 
 befit the latter class may be as diligently 
 studied and as carefully observed by them. 
 The Spirit of Christ in die soul of a be- 
 liever will manifest its presence by the 
 same phenomena in the case of a Samuel 
 sanctified from his birth as in that of a Saul 
 arrested by sovereign grace in a career of 
 flagrant opposition to Christ. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF RELIGIOUS 
 LIVING. 
 
 THE sincere professor of the religion 
 of Christ will mean something very 
 definite by the profession which he has 
 made. If in all enterprises it is requisite 
 that a man should have a clear idea of 
 what he is doing, it is especially requisite 
 in the practice of religion, confessedly the 
 most important enterprise in which man 
 can eno-aee. No one has ever risen to 
 the grandeur of a Christian life who has 
 not felt the necessity of intelligently and 
 deliberately weighing and measuring the 
 import of such a life. 
 
 " Which of you " asks the Saviour (Luke 
 xiv. 28), "intending to build a tower, sit- 
 teth not down first and counteth the cost, 
 whether he have sufficient to finish it ? 
 Lest haply, after he hath laid the founda- 
 
 14 
 
TRUE RELIGIOUS LIVING. 1$ 
 
 tion and is not able to finish it, all that 
 behold it begin to mock him, saying, This 
 man beean to build, and was not able to 
 finish. Or what king, going to make war 
 with another king, sitteth not down first and 
 consulteth whether he be able with ten 
 thousand to meet him that cometh against 
 him with twenty thousand?" With the 
 breadth and the closeness of circumspec- 
 tion indicated by these operations the 
 young Christian ought to scrutinize the 
 nature, the scope and the aim of the 
 movement in which he is embarking. 
 
 Who would start upon a journey with- 
 out having a destination in view, or with- 
 out endeavoring to foresee and provide 
 for all the conditions necessary for a sure 
 and safe transit to the desired point, and 
 for the attainment of the objects proposed 
 in the purpose to visit it? 
 
 A recent traveler, in a work describing 
 a tour around the world, tells us that " he 
 had planned his entire excursion several 
 months before settino; out, with the times 
 of arrival and departure for each country 
 that he expected to visit; and until reach- 
 
1 6 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 ing Europe, where his plans were inten- 
 tionally left uncertain, he was scarcely a 
 day out of time at any stage of the jour- 
 ney." Of course such a journey was 
 wisely and successfully made ; the traveler 
 accomplished just what he intended to do. 
 The traveler upon the Christian life can 
 hope for a satisfactory issue to his under- 
 taking only by exercising the same fore- 
 thought. Standing within the threshold 
 of the Church, with a future consecrated 
 to Christ before him, the earnest inquiry 
 of his soul ought to be, and will be if he 
 is a true man, " Lord, what wilt thou have 
 me to do ?" 
 
 That there are deliberate dissemblers 
 and hypocrites in the Church is undoubted- 
 ly true, but such cases are extremely rare. 
 Ordinarily, those who formally make a pro- 
 fession of religion are sincere. It may 
 happen that the act has been performed 
 under an emotional excitement, and that 
 after the transient inspiration has subsided 
 the individual has relapsed into his old 
 form of life, but still he was sincere when 
 the profession was made. He was deceived 
 
TRUE RELIGIOUS LIVING. 1 7 
 
 in persuading himself that he was a subject 
 of regenerating grace, but he was honest 
 in entertaining the persuasion. Simon 
 Magus even (Acts viii. 13) gives evidence 
 of beino- honest when he professed faith 
 and received baptism as a disciple of Jesus, 
 though he afterward showed that his "heart 
 was not rio^ht in the sig^ht of God." 
 
 If the genuine principle of spiritual life 
 is in the newly-enlisted church-member, he 
 will be honest not only in the persuasion 
 that he is a Christian, but in the sense of 
 desiring to know and meaning to be and 
 to do all that is implied in the name and 
 character of a Christian. Whither this 
 journey upoii zvhich he has e7itered is to 
 lead him, and what is involved in the prose- 
 c2ition of it, are the anxious and absorbing 
 inquiries which his mind will be constrained 
 to revolve. On these inquiries a few re- 
 flections which I shall proceed to offer 
 may throw light. 
 
 I. 
 It is evident that the idea of religious 
 living, as given in the phrase " Following 
 
t8 following CHRIST. 
 
 Christ," includes vastly more than a mere 
 external religiousness or the putting on of 
 a religious manner and the practicing of a 
 certain set of religious acts and rites, 
 
 A relioion of the look, the tone, the 
 dress, the outward ceremonial, has received 
 the distinctive name of " sanctimonious- 
 ness " — an opprobrious term by which 
 the world has denounced a religion of 
 form and appearance as a spurious re- 
 ligion. Real religion Is a property of 
 the man himself. It is not made by the 
 drapery he wears, or the dialect he uses, 
 or the society to which he attaches him- 
 self. The follower of Christ will change 
 his ways because he is 3l Christian, not in 
 order to become a Christian. 
 
 Even under the Old Dispensation, where 
 external signs of membership in the Church 
 were so largely enjoined, the principle was 
 distinctly announced (i Sam. xvi. 7) : "The 
 Lord seeth not as man seeth ; for man 
 looketh on the outward appearance, but 
 the Lord looketh on the heart." No right- 
 minded professor of religion will delude 
 himself with the idea that his vow of dis- 
 
TRUE RELIGIOUS LIVING. 1 9 
 
 cipleship is fulfilled by the putting on of a 
 religious demeanor or the doing merely 
 the things which religious people ordinarily 
 do. He will feel that he meant vastly 
 more than pledging himself to appear in 
 the house of God on the Sabbath, to 
 repeat two or three prayers a day, to come 
 to the communion-table at the stated times, 
 to subscribe for a missionary paper, to 
 drop his contribution into the collection- 
 box and to vote at a church-meeting, when 
 he pledged himself to follow Christ. He 
 will know that there is no " keeping of 
 the words" of Christ without "lovine" 
 Christ (John xiv. 23), and love puts the 
 consecration of the heart at the root of 
 acts of devotion. 
 
 Religion, it is true, like every other strong 
 spiritual force introduced into a man, may 
 be expected to impress itself more or less 
 upon his manner and conduct. In some 
 instances it may effect a total transforma- 
 tion of character, as in the case of St. Paul, 
 chancrinor the lion into the lamb. It cer- 
 tainly will make the man who has been 
 neglectful of religious customs and ob- 
 
20 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 servances attentive to them ; it will mani- 
 fest its presence in the soul by this outward 
 sign. But a sign is not identical with the 
 thing it represents; the fruit of a tree is 
 not the tree nor the life of the tree. 
 
 There may be the sign of religion where 
 there is no religion. The Jews in Isaiah's 
 time (Isa. i.) were scrupulous in keeping 
 their festivals, bringing their oblations and 
 offering up their prayers, and yet in the 
 sieht of God there was " no soundness in 
 them." The Pharisees in our Saviour's 
 time made themselves conspicuous by their 
 badges of piety, but were likened by him 
 to " whited sepulchres." The mere calling 
 Christ " Lord, Lord," or the acknowledging 
 him by any other symbolical act, does not 
 make a man a member of the kingdom of 
 heaven (Matt. vii. 21.) The honest soldier 
 of Christ, in espousing a religious life, will 
 not mistake the wearing of a church uni- 
 form or the practicing of a church drill 
 for such a life. It is not the new garb, 
 but the new heart — not the form of godli- 
 ness, but the spirit of it — which is required 
 for the following of Jesus. 
 
TRUE RELIGIOUS LIVING. 21 
 
 II. 
 
 Nor is the act of entering into church- 
 membership to be regarded as a mere 
 induction into a corporation and a sub- 
 scription to the laws of that corporation. 
 
 Men have found it convenient or neces- 
 sary in the prosecution of a variety of 
 objects to unite themselves under a social 
 compact or constitution ; they thus form a 
 league or confederation for a special pur- 
 pose. There must be, of course, in every 
 such league or confederation, a set of laws 
 bearing upon the object proposed by it, by 
 which every person entering it is bound. By 
 this his duty as a member of it is limited and 
 defined. A temperance society, for instance, 
 adopts its rules with a view to the promotion 
 of temperance, and he who joins it engages 
 to observe these rules. So lone as this is 
 done all is done that is required of him. 
 To put the church in the same category 
 with a temperance society, and to construe 
 the phrase ''joining the church" as signify- 
 ing the same kind of act as the joining of 
 such a society, is a fundamental mistake. 
 In becoming a church-member a man is, 
 
22 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 indeed, entering a social body and placing 
 himself, to a certain extent, under the 
 obligations involved in the constitution of 
 that body. The church is the house of 
 God, and, like every other house, it must 
 have its peculiar economy — that is, its 
 house-law. This house-law, which sets cer- 
 tain objects before the church and pre- 
 scribes certain rules and methods for the 
 attainment of them, requires organization 
 and concerted effort on the part of the 
 members. The worship of God, for in- 
 stance, is to be maintained in the world, 
 and this creates a necessity for a num- 
 ber of practical arrangements involving 
 an exercise of deliberation and an ex- 
 penditure of money in which every mem- 
 ber must share. It is his duty in his 
 measure to do whatever the church as a 
 body is required to do, and a duty which 
 he owes to the body ; so that his fellow- 
 members are wronged whenever he fails 
 to do it. 
 
 But no intelligent disciple of Christ 
 would for a moment substitute compliance 
 with this house-law of the church for obe- 
 
TRUE RELIGIOUS LIVING. 23 
 
 dience to the law of God, or feel that in 
 discharging his duty to the corporation of 
 which he was a member he had acquitted 
 himself of his obligations as a follower of 
 Christ. His social life as a church-member 
 is only one department — and a lower one 
 — of that religious life which he is bound 
 to lead as a Christian ; and if his aim is 
 only to do the will of his brethren, he has 
 failed to recognize the hrst principle of 
 religious living, which is to do the will of 
 his Father in heaven. To stand well and 
 to have a fair report among those with 
 whom he has associated himself in church- 
 fellowship is an end which every professor 
 of religion ought to keep in view ; but if his 
 purpose contemplates no higher end than 
 this, it will certainly never realize itself in 
 making him a follower of Christ. 
 
 III. 
 As mere conformity to church-regula- 
 tions is not the rule of religious living, 
 neither is union with the church to be 
 made the ground upon which the Christian 
 rests his expectation of spiritual blessings. 
 
24 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 The church cannot do the work of 
 Christ; it cannot regenerate nor sanctify 
 nor save. It is not a divinely-instituted 
 insurance-company, pledging itself, in con- 
 sideration of their compliance with certain 
 terms of membership, to protect its sub- 
 scribers from all spiritual loss and damage. 
 Under some theories, conspicuously the 
 Romish, this idea is unquestionably the 
 cardinal one. The Church is represented as 
 a mother, assuming the custody and guaran- 
 teeing the salvation of all who put them- 
 selves under her charge. It is held forth 
 as an asylum within whose sacred enclosure 
 the inmate will be shielded from the pur- 
 suit of law and furnished with all the aids 
 of grace. Let the church-member, it is 
 said, implicitly accept the teachings of the 
 Church and regularly comply with its or- 
 dinances, and the Church pledges to him 
 an assured interest in all the privileges of 
 the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 This is simply a modification of the old 
 Jewish doctrine which identified religion 
 with relationship to Abraham — a doctrine 
 which John the Baptist denounced when he 
 
TRUE RELIGIOUS LIVING. 2$ 
 
 cried (Matt. iii. 9), "Think not to say 
 within yourselves, We have Abraham to 
 our father, for I say unto you that God is 
 able of these stones to raise up children 
 unto Abraham;" and which the Saviour 
 condemned when he said (Matt. viii. 11), 
 " Many shall come from the east and the 
 west, and sit down with Abraham and 
 Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; 
 but the children of the kingdom shall be 
 cast out into outer darkness." It is the 
 prerogative of Christ personally to forgive 
 sin, to reconcile the soul to God and to 
 bestow eternal life ; and he has never 
 delegated this prerogative to his Church, 
 and no policy or certificate that church 
 authorities can issue is of any worth un- 
 less Christ has first pronounced the believ- 
 er forgiven and justified. The man who 
 puts dependence upon a Church in the 
 place of following Christ is indulging a 
 fatal delusion. 
 
 IV. 
 In distinction from these low and super- 
 ficial views of a religious life the Bible 
 
26 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 places the foundation and source of it in 
 a new nature. It represents the Christian, 
 not as an old creature rehabilitated and 
 newly shaped and labeled, but as a new 
 creature specifically, one quickened by a 
 new principle and reanimated and ener- 
 gized by a new spirit (2 Cor. v. 17. Rom. 
 viii. 9). 
 
 The term " religious living " simply 
 means the religious man living. If the 
 church-member in entering upon a course 
 of religious living has made a change in 
 his mode of living, it is because he has 
 himself undergone a change of nature, or 
 what our Lord calls (John iii. 3) a new 
 birth. The change in the outward and 
 demonstrative is merely the sequel of a 
 change which has occurred within him. 
 By this change the carnal mind by which 
 he was previously governed has given 
 place, through faith in Christ, to a spiritual 
 mind ; love to God has been elevated 
 above love to the creature, and all the 
 minor affections are embraced and con- 
 trolled by this predominant one. The law 
 by which the believer's living is now 
 
TRUE RELIGIOUS LIVING. 2/ 
 
 directed and ordered requires him to be 
 religious and forbids him to be anything 
 else. " How shall we that are dead to sin," 
 asks St. Paul (Rom. vi. 2), " live any 
 longer therein?" How can the man in 
 whose nature love to God has been im- 
 planted as the reigning principle be any- 
 thing but a religious man in his living? 
 As w^ell might we ask, " How can the star 
 be a star without shining?" or, "How can 
 a fruit tree be a fruit tree without bearing 
 fruit?" 
 
 Religious living is expressed not so 
 much by the phrase " I do " as by the 
 phrase " I am ;" consequently, in making 
 a profession of religion the man is making 
 a promise, not to do certain specified 
 things, but to be in all things a certain 
 definite character. He purposes and he 
 pledges himself to be at all times and in 
 all circumstances a Christian man. In 
 private as well as in public, in secular 
 transactions as well as sacred ones, on 
 weekdays as well as on the Sabbath, 
 outside of the church as well as in it, he 
 recognizes the obligation as resting upon 
 
28 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 him to exhibit the nature of one born of 
 God. 
 
 V. 
 
 A Christian hfe, conducted under the 
 promptings of this new nature, will express 
 itself actively in a species of working cor- 
 responding to this nature. 
 
 Every honest professor of religion will 
 feel that he has bound himself by a solemn 
 indenture to be a worker for God. It is 
 only under this form that his living can 
 claim to be a following of Christ, for 
 Christ affirms of himself (John vi. 38), "I 
 came down from heaven, not to do mine 
 own will, but the will of him that sent me." 
 Put the term " business " here in this pas- 
 sage in the place of the term '' will," as we 
 may properly do, and it will teach that in 
 the believer's scheme of life God's business 
 must take precedence of his own. 
 
 The privileges of the gospel can never 
 be divorced from the duties of the gospel. 
 The faith that receives Christ as a Saviour 
 will receive him also as a Master. " Freely 
 ye have received," as a statement of gratu- 
 itous blessings conferred, must always 
 
TRUE RELIGIOUS LIVING. 2g 
 
 Stand conjoined in the policy of the Chris- 
 tian with the injunction " Freely give." 
 We are engrafted into Christ by the divine 
 Husbandman not merely that we may live, 
 but that we may give evidence of our liv- 
 ing by our acting or working. " Herein 
 is my Father glorified," says the Lord 
 (John XV. 8), "that ye bear much fruit; so 
 shall ye be my disciples." 
 
 The " high calling " which every follower 
 of Jesus has received binds him to make 
 the glory of God the chief end of his liv- 
 ing. He is the servant entrusted with 
 special talents by his Lord, and the com- 
 mand "Occupy" — trade with these — "till 
 I come " accompanies the trust. "Always 
 abounding in the work of the Lord " is 
 a definition of, as well as a precept to, the 
 Christian. He is to " work out his own sal- 
 vation," or to prove himself to be in a state 
 of salvation by his working. He is to " min- 
 ister," as his Master did, to the eood of 
 others. He is to show his love to God by 
 his love to his brethren. He is to pray for 
 the coming of the kingdom of God, and to 
 show that his praying is sincere by working 
 
30 FOLLOWING CHKLST. 
 
 for the coming of that kingdom. He is to 
 make his Hght so positively and conspicu- 
 ously shine that all in the house may see it. 
 He is to travel with hourly diligence and with 
 lifelong effort to the promised land, not be 
 borne there in his luxurious car without a 
 care or a movement of his own. 
 
 The relation of all other avocations to the 
 supreme one of working for Christ is well 
 stated by an eminent living minister in the 
 pithy questions, 'Ts religion your business, 
 or business your religion ? Does your candle 
 shine upon the bushel, or does the bushel hide 
 your candle ?" When Christ gives the com- 
 mand '' Follow me," he imposes an obliga- 
 tion which involves in it the forsaking of all 
 for his sake. Henceforth the business of 
 God outranks and holds in subordination 
 to itself all other exercises of life in the 
 believer. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Religious livino^ furthermore, is to be 
 conceived of as the carrying out of the 
 engagements of a covenant between the 
 soul and God. 
 
 Whatever may be the form of the pro- 
 
TRUE RELIGIOUS UVIXG. 3 1 
 
 cess, no man becomes a Christian man with- 
 out making a covenant with God. It may be 
 expressed in literal terms. Dr. Doddridge 
 has inserted such a covenant in his Rise 
 and Progress of Religion i7i the Said for 
 the use of persons adopting a religious 
 life. If this is not done literally, it is done 
 virtually, by every one who embraces such 
 a life. 
 
 The form of this covenant in Old-Testa- 
 ment times is stated by Isaiah (xxiii. 13) : 
 " O Lord our God, other lords beside thee 
 have had dominion over us ; but by thee 
 only will we make mention of thy name." 
 An example of it is given in Josh. xxiv. 22— 
 26. After drawing from the people a pro- 
 fession of their allegiance to God. Joshua 
 seals, as it were, the covenant into which 
 they had entered by setting up a great 
 stone under an oak that was near the 
 sanctuary of the Lord and saying to the 
 people, '' Behold, this stone shall be a 
 witness unto us, for it hath heard all the 
 words of the Lord which he spake unto 
 us ; it shall be, therefore, a witness unto 
 you, lest ye deny your God." 
 
32 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 In the New Testament this covenant is 
 described or suo^orested in various forms, 
 as in these passages : '* Ye also are become 
 dead to the law by the body of Christ, that 
 ye should be married to another, even to 
 him who is raised from the dead, that we 
 should bring forth fruit unto God" (Rom. 
 vii. 4) ; " Ye who were without Christ, 
 being aliens from the commonwealth of 
 Israel and strangers from the covenant 
 of promise, having no hope and without 
 God in the world, now, in Christ Jesus, 
 are made nigh by the blood of Christ" 
 (Eph. ii. 12, 13); and " I have espoused you 
 to one husband, that I may present you as 
 a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Cor. xi. 2). 
 
 Baptism and the Lord's Supper are 
 essentially covenanting transactions. They 
 are modes by which faith in Christ as the 
 Prophet, the Priest and the King of the 
 people of God is professed by the party 
 engaging in them. If they mean anything, 
 they mean that that party is by these 
 solemn rites binding himself to make 
 Christ in fact his Prophet, his Priest and 
 his King. And these ordinances, being 
 
TRUE RELIGIOUS LIVING. 33 
 
 direct and positive institutions of God, 
 have in them all the significance of a 
 pledge or a seal on God's part that the 
 blessings secured by the threefold work 
 of Christ shall be conferred upon him. 
 
 All covenanting is a serious procedure, 
 but in covenanting with God the proced- 
 ure reaches a climax in both force and ex- 
 tent. The man's true self and his whole 
 self must be conveyed to God in it ; all 
 other interests and obligations must be 
 covered by it. All the countless circles 
 through which life revolves — personal, do- 
 mestic, political — must be included in and 
 bounded by that supreme one which passes 
 between the soul and God. 
 
 VII. 
 
 As a consequence of this last fact. 
 Christian living is to be conceived of as 
 the carrying out of a vow of consecration 
 to God. 
 
 If it be a following of Christ, it must 
 have a constant reference to the redemp- 
 tion of Christ as the source of both its 
 motive and its rule. Now, an act, a life, 
 
34 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 of self-devotement on his part is clearly 
 the only proportionate acknowledgment 
 which the believer can make to that un- 
 speakable demonstration of his love to 
 him which God has made in the gospel. 
 It is the response on man's side — and the 
 only one possible — which corresponds with 
 the call addressed to him on God's side. 
 As every Christian has been bought with 
 a price, even " the precious blood of 
 Christ" (i Pet. i. 19), he is no longer his 
 own, but belongs to Him who died for him 
 and rose again. A child of wrath by 
 nature, even as others, he has become 
 in Christ a child of God. As such he 
 must yield himself in all respects to the 
 demands of this sacred relationship. As 
 such he must freely assent to the absolute 
 claim which God has to the service of his 
 life. He must present himself, soul, body 
 and spirit, as a living sacrifice to him. He 
 must regard himself as charo^ed with a 
 " holy priesthood," and as such separated 
 to the work of showing forth the praises 
 of Him who has called him unto his king- 
 dom and glory. 
 
TRUE RELIGIOUS LIVING, 35 
 
 When Christ prayed for the disciples 
 (John xvii. 17) that they might be "sanc- 
 tified" through the truth, he prayed that 
 they might be so consecrated to a priestly 
 life. As for their sakes he had so sancti- 
 fied himself, or devoted himself to the 
 doing of the Father's will, so he invoked 
 upon them the grace which should enable 
 them, as his followers, to realize the same 
 consecrated spirit. 
 
 The apostles continually press the same 
 idea upon their readers as the cardinal 
 principle of Christian piety, as in those 
 impassioned appeals of St. Paul to the 
 Corinthians (2 Cor. vi. 14-18) : "What fel- 
 lowship hath righteousness with unright- 
 eousness ? And what communion hath 
 light with darkness ? And what concord 
 hath Christ with Belial ? Or what part 
 hath he that believeth with an infidel ? 
 And what agreement hath the temple of 
 God with idols ? For ye are the temple 
 of the living God ; as God hath said, I will 
 dwell in them and walk in them ; and I will 
 be their God, and they shall be my people. 
 Wherefore come out from among them, and 
 
36 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch 
 not the unclean thing ; and I will receive 
 you and will be a Father unto you, and you 
 shall be my sons and daughters, saith the 
 Lord Almighty." 
 
 The honest professor of religion will 
 understand the thorouehness of the self- 
 devotement involved in the act of profes- 
 sion. He will forsake all to follow Christ, 
 and in the surrender will make no reserve 
 — will keep back no part of the price. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 These views of the Christian life, deep 
 and far-reaching as they are, certainly cor- 
 respond with the form of that life presented 
 in the Scriptures. They must be true if 
 the Christian religion has anything of the 
 significance ascribed to it by the inspired 
 writers. 
 
 It cannot be safe to reject them as ex- 
 travagant or fanatical, for that would be to 
 charge the Saviour and his apostles with 
 misleading and trifling with the souls they 
 are evidently so anxious to guide into the 
 way of life. It cannot be safe to follow 
 
TRUE RELIGIOUS LIVING. 37 
 
 the lower standards of religious living 
 which may be common among professed 
 Christians, for that would be to put the 
 human idea of religion in the place of the 
 divine. 
 
 O believer, see to it that these views are 
 well weighed and deliberately accepted in 
 making your profession of religion ! Mis- 
 takes in your negotiations with God must 
 be fatal to the whole transaction. Fair- 
 dealing is the only kind of dealing which 
 can have success with him, and fair-dealing 
 here requires that your true self, and your 
 whole self, should be given to him when 
 you profess to become his servant. 
 
 Remember, it is your soul which you are 
 seeking to save, your soul which Christ 
 died to redeem, your soul which the Holy 
 Spirit is employed in sanctifying. It is 
 with the soul that you must realize and 
 express your religion. Unless the soul 
 has been united to Christ, there is no life 
 in you ; unless the soul has uttered itself 
 in your vows of church-membership, they 
 have been an empty form ; unless the soul 
 has gone with your sacramental acts, there 
 
38 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 is no meaning in them. It would have 
 been better if they had never been per- 
 formed, for they have been but a semblance 
 and a pretence. Your religious life, if such 
 it can be called, will be a heartless and 
 mechanical servitude without consistency 
 or effectiveness, without value in the sight 
 of God and without comfort to yourself. 
 To enter the church with any other views 
 than those which have been described will 
 be to entail upon you the misery of at- 
 tempting to serve two masters, will expose 
 you to endless self-contradictions, and will 
 leave you, like the branch that abideth not 
 in the vine, to be ultimately withered, cast 
 out and burned in the fire. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING, 
 
 A RELIGIOUS life is one which at all 
 points maintains a contact and a 
 communication with God. 
 
 That "God is not in all his thouQfhts " 
 (Ps. X. 4) is the definition of an irreligious 
 man. The reverse is true of the religious 
 man : God is in all his thoughts ; the law 
 of the Lord is his meditation day and 
 night. The motive, the purpose, the act, 
 which is not coupled with faith in God and 
 does not recognize his authority, however 
 good and commendable it may be under 
 certain aspects, is not religious. Every 
 step in religious living must be taken, so 
 to speak, in company with God, and must 
 help to form a walk with God. Following 
 Christ is at the same time a " walkinor in 
 him " (Col. ii. 6). 
 
 It is of the first importance to the Chris- 
 
40 FOLLOW J NG CHRIST. 
 
 tian — indeed, it is the very condition of his 
 spiritual health and progress — that he 
 should be kept consciously and intelli- 
 gently under the influence of this associa- 
 tion with God in Christ. Hence, in seek- 
 inor for a rule for his relig^ious life he must 
 assure himself that everything which it 
 contains expresses the mind of God and 
 is accompanied by the authority of God. 
 The conscience is enfeebled and vitiated 
 just in proportion as it admits the right of 
 any other sovereign to control it. The 
 religious affections become morbid and 
 fantastic whenever they are stimulated by 
 merely human excitements or directed 
 through merely human channels. The 
 proper vital element of the soul is the 
 " inspiration of the Almighty." The in- 
 spiration of man is a source of disease and 
 corruption, just as the body is sustained by 
 the pure atmospheric air breathed down 
 upon it from the regions above, and sickens 
 when exposed to the mephitic gases which 
 spring from the earth beneath. To usurp 
 the prerogative of God and arbitrarily to 
 burden the consciences of men with a 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 4 1 
 
 schedule of duties of its own invention, as 
 the Romish Church has done, is to bring 
 the minds of its subjects into the grossest 
 bondage and to expose them to the va- 
 garies of a bhnd superstition. To teach, 
 for instance, that hoHness, which is the 
 essential attribute of God, and which 
 attaches only to things which he has seen 
 fit to associate with himself, is attached to 
 places and times and relics, is to break the 
 bond of faith by which the soul is kept in 
 union with God and to make it the victim 
 of an indefinite credulity. From such a 
 debasing apostasy as this Christ came to 
 deliver his followers, and therefore he 
 taught them that the true worshipers of 
 God are those who worship him, not by 
 frequenting certain shrines or observing 
 certain rites, but " in spirit and in truth ;" 
 and that the keeping of the traditions of 
 men is practically a rejecting of the com- 
 mandments of God (Mark vii. 9). 
 
 I. 
 
 It is clear, therefore, that the Christian 
 is to seek his great rule of living in the 
 
42 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 Bible. From the character which is as- 
 sumed by that book as the "word of God" 
 and the " law of the Lord," it exactly fills 
 the place which is required of anything 
 which claims to be a rule of religious liv- 
 ing, and a place which nothing else claim- 
 ing to be such a rule can fill. Whatever 
 the Bible enjoins as right or forbids as 
 wrong is presented to the believer as right 
 or wrong in the judgment of God ; he ac- 
 cepts it as right or wrong on the direct 
 ground of God's authority. This authority 
 is legitimate ; in acknowledging it the soul 
 is acting both rationally and religiously. 
 
 The adequacy of the Bible as a rule of 
 life is also complete. It is one of the 
 strongest proofs that it is the product of 
 a divine Mind that it is so constructed as 
 to meet all the requirements of a directory 
 for all men in following Christ. It ac- 
 complishes its objects in a manner which 
 is thorough and peculiar to itself. It does 
 not propound a code of formal laws pre- 
 scribing by what particular acts a man is to 
 serve God or by what set of doings or not- 
 doings he is to prove himself a Christian 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 43 
 
 man. From the outset it draws a distinc- 
 tion between " the letter " and " the spirit." 
 It acts upon the principle that you must 
 make the tree good before you can expect 
 the fruit to be good. If it writes the ten 
 commandments on visible tablets of stone, 
 it shows that they all hang upon the law, 
 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with 
 all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
 with all thy mind" (Matt. xxii. ^il)- It 
 begins its work of regulating the life of 
 the man by regulating the affections and 
 dispositions that lie within him, so that his 
 supreme desire shall be to do the will of 
 his Father in heaven. It purges the eye 
 of the traveler before it sets before him 
 the map from which he is to learn his way. 
 As the Saviour teaches (John vii. 17), it is 
 the man who " wills " — that is, zvishes — to 
 do God's will to whom the doctrine, the 
 positive law, of God becomes intelligible 
 and authoritative. 
 
 The Bible next to such a willine mind 
 communicates such a conception of the 
 character and mind of God as makes it 
 easy for the believer to determine in all 
 
44 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 cases and at all seasons what his will must 
 be. The Bible is from first to last a rev- 
 elation of God. The faithful student of 
 it grows in the knowledge of God from 
 day to day ; and, as God is the embodiment 
 of all the elements and principles of recti- 
 tude, the knowledge of him is identical 
 with a knowledge of these elements and 
 principles. In the light of them the hon- 
 est seeker can always find the path of duty. 
 He does not need, like the man walking 
 through the intricate streets of a city by 
 night, to track his way by the blaze of a 
 series of lamps, but it lies before him 
 clearly defined in the broad sunlight by 
 which the whole scene around him is 
 illumined. 
 
 Once more, the Bible does its work by 
 keeping the mind of the follower of Christ 
 always directly under the wholesome in- 
 fluence of God's immediate presence and 
 guidance. As it is the attractive property 
 of the magnet which keeps the needle 
 pointing to it, so the soul, under the im- 
 pressions communicated to it by God's 
 word, is pervaded with a spiritual suscepti- 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 45 
 
 bility or tractability of temper toward God 
 which makes it almost spontaneously re- 
 spond to every intimation of his will. Thus 
 Jesus says (John vi. 44) that it is through a 
 "drawing" of the Father that any man 
 comes to him. It is this habitual or in- 
 stinctive cleaving of the soul to God — this 
 " following hard after him," as the Psalmist 
 calls it (Ps. Ixiii. 8) — which keeps the 
 Christian in the right ways of God and 
 protects him from converting religious liv- 
 ing into a mere self-imposed will-worship 
 on the one hand, or a mere mechanical rit- 
 ualism on the other. 
 
 To the question, therefore, " By what 
 rule am I to regulate my conduct?" which 
 the professor of religion will naturally ask, 
 and ought to ask, I would answer, The 
 Bible. Take that as the " man of your 
 counsel," and use other guides only as 
 aids to your knowledge of that. The 
 Bible, if studied with the simple desire 
 to know the will of God and with a fair 
 and intelligent application of its teachings, 
 will give you all the light you need. What- 
 ever formal rules you may see fit to adopt 
 
46 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 must be drawn from this source, or they 
 can have no authority over you. By going 
 to the original fountain you will be kept 
 most sensibly under the very law of God, 
 and, furthermore, will be sufficiently thrown 
 upon your own vigilance and discretion to 
 keep your sense of responsibility for the 
 manner of your living in habitual and 
 healthy exercise. 
 
 Be, then, above all things, if you wish to 
 be a genuine follower of Christ, a student 
 of the Bible. And by the term " student " 
 here I mean much more than a mere 
 reader. The distinction between these 
 terms I shall endeavor to point out in 
 the following remarks. 
 
 II. 
 
 In order to study the Bible, it must be 
 read with a purpose or for the sake of a 
 definite benefit. 
 
 An aimless or vagrant reading of God's 
 word, or the reading of it without an object 
 to which the reading of it is to introduce 
 us, is as futile an effort of mind as would 
 be the repeating of so many words in an 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 4/ 
 
 unknown tongrue. To read the Bible with 
 the expectation that the mere act is to 
 aid us is to treat it as we would a charm. 
 It is the same kind of act as that of the 
 Romanist when he kisses a crucifix or 
 sprinkles himself with holy water. The 
 Bible is to be consulted for the purpose of 
 learning from it how God is to be pleased 
 or how Christ is to be followed ; its use 
 consists in its fitness and ability to give 
 this knowledge. If nothing is sought from 
 it, nothing will be gained. The connection 
 which our Lord so emphatically noticed 
 between the acts of seeking and finding, 
 asking and receiving, knocking and the 
 opening of a door, applies to the study of 
 the Bible. To find anything in it, there 
 must be a seeking ; to receive anything 
 from it, there must be an asking; to gain 
 access to its contents, there must be a 
 knocking. If the professing Christian be 
 honest in his profession, he will be able to 
 give an answer to the question, " Why do 
 you read your Bible ?" It will be, " Because 
 I wish to learn how I am to live as a 
 Christian ; because I earnestly desire to 
 
48 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 acquire all the instruction within my reach 
 in regard to the type of character and the 
 manner of life which befit me as a Chris- 
 tian." Such a one will crave such infor- 
 mation as the Bible contains just as a hun- 
 gry man craves food. His craving for the 
 truth which acquaints him with God and 
 his will will have in it all the distinctness 
 and force of an appetite. This appetite he 
 will bring with him to the Scriptures when- 
 ever he reads them. And Scripture truth 
 will have a relish in it corresponding to 
 this appetite. It may be taken as a sign 
 of a decline in the spiritual health of any 
 Christian when this relish for the Bible 
 declines. The difference between a spirit- 
 ual mind and a worldly mind evinces itself 
 in one prominent way in this — that, while 
 the latter desires not the knowledgre of 
 God, the former esteems such knowledge 
 to be supremely valuable and is attracted 
 to it by an instinctive affection. 
 
 If love to God be in the soul, as it must 
 be in the case of the true believer, it will 
 express itself as naturally as in any con- 
 ceivable way, by a habit of reading the 
 
THE RULE OE REfJGIOUS LIVING. 49 
 
 Bible, and reading it specifically for the pur- 
 pose of gaining a better acquaintance with 
 God. The Bible will be taken up with a 
 de6nite desire to learn something from it, 
 and will be laid down with the inquiries, 
 "What have I learned ? What new views 
 of truth have been acquired? What pre- 
 vious ones have been confirmed ? What 
 new emotions have been awakened, or 
 what familiar ones have been quickened, 
 by this reading of it ?" The remark often 
 made, " I read my Bible daily," or '' I read 
 so much of it statedly," means nothing un- 
 less it means that the reading has been 
 conducted with direct reference to the 
 spiritual profiting of the reader. The 
 eyes that, seeing, see not, and the ears 
 that, hearing, hear not, the things which 
 God has revealed are marks of the rep- 
 robate, not of the child of God. 
 
 III. 
 The Bible is to be studied in a reveren- 
 tial spirit. 
 
 Every application of the mind to it is an 
 exercise as truly devotional as prayer ; it 
 4 
 
50 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 is literally communing with God. Those 
 formulas, "Thus saith the Lord," "Thus 
 spake the Spirit " or " the Holy Ghost," 
 which are so frequent in the Scriptures, 
 affirm that the reader is brought by these 
 Scriptures into direct communication with 
 the mind of God. The effect of this con- 
 viction ought to be to invest the Bible with 
 a sacredness which cannot possibly attach 
 to any merely human composition. Any- 
 thing which serves to address the soul, 
 however remotely, as a voice from God — 
 as some of the stupendous objects or 
 startling phenomena of nature — irresist- 
 ibly suffuses it with a feeling of awe. The 
 Bible is that voice speaking in articulate 
 tones. The character which it claims for 
 itself is that it is, as to the contents of it 
 or the things which it reveals and teaches, 
 a direct utterance from God. Moses and 
 the prophets wrote it, but they wrote it by 
 the command of God and for the purpose 
 of eivinof to men the knowledo^e which 
 God thought it necessary for them to 
 possess ; and the testimony which it gives, 
 according to the Saviour's emphatic dec- 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 5 I 
 
 laration (Luke xvi. 31), is entitled to a 
 credit greater than that which would be 
 due to one risen from the dead. What the 
 reader of the Bible needs is always to 
 have the sense of its sacredness present to 
 his mind. The impressions left by its 
 teaching will be genuine only when made 
 with the aid and throueh the medium of 
 this sense. God's voice will not have the 
 effect of God's voice if it be not consciously 
 recognized as his voice. It is the intelli- 
 gent apprehension of this feature in the 
 Bible that it is God's voice speaking to the 
 reader which will make the use of it a real 
 converse with God. 
 
 Now, this sense of the sacredness of the 
 Bible is something which the man who 
 seeks to find in it a rule of religious 
 living must religiously cherish and culti- 
 vate. Familiarity with any object is known 
 — even to a proverb — to abate the feeling 
 of reverence with which it was at first 
 reg^arded. And then the elevated frame 
 of mind — the strain perhaps it may be 
 called — which is implied in a feeling of 
 reverence is apt to subside or grow lax 
 
52 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 through the effort required to maintain it. 
 Before one is aware of it in reading the 
 Bible the spirit may sink back from the 
 height to which it had been Hfted by the 
 thought of God, and page after page of 
 the divine book may be Hstlessly passed 
 over without the inspiration of that 
 thought. 
 
 This sense of the sacredness of the 
 Bible, must, I repeat, be carefully fostered 
 by the Christian. Just because it is one 
 of those forms of spiritual sensibility, one 
 of those delicate habits, which prove the 
 perfectness of the organism in which they 
 reside, it is easily impaired, or even lost. 
 As the ear which is not quick to discern 
 the distinction of sounds would never 
 convey to the heart the peculiar force 
 which lies in a tone of friendship or love, 
 so the Bible, when it is not felt by the 
 soul to be the voice of God, cannot affect 
 the soul with the force which properly be- 
 longs to a communication from him. 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 53 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Bible is to be studied in a spirit of 
 docility and submissiveness. 
 
 It speaks with authority. The teachings 
 of Jesus impressed the people with the 
 conviction that he spake in this way, and 
 their minds, in listening to him, spon- 
 taneously assented to the truth of his 
 doctrines and the justness of his precepts. 
 The disposition to criticise and to contro- 
 vert, in which, perhaps, we may lawfully 
 indulge when reading an ordinary book, 
 we should habitually repress in dealing 
 with the Bible. Clearly, the Christian, 
 whatever he may once have done, does not, 
 after surrendering his faith to God, claim 
 the right to m.ake his own opinion the 
 arbiter in matters of truth and righteous- 
 ness. He has become the little child, and 
 confessing his own ignorance and foolish- 
 ness, and rejoicing to recognize in God a 
 Father who cannot err and will not deceive, 
 he looks up to him as the ultimate arbiter in 
 all such matters. Confidence in the infalli- 
 ble source of his knowledge precludes all 
 questioning and argument, because all 
 
54 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 questions are solved and all arguments are 
 comprehended in the one conviction that 
 the Bible is the word of God. 
 
 There is nothing unreasonable in such 
 confidence. It is in just such confidence 
 that the scholar takes as true what his 
 teacher tells him is true, and the child does 
 or refrains from doing the things which his 
 parents command or forbid. It is only re- 
 ceiving as truth what comes through the 
 testimony of One who knows, and accept- 
 ing as duty what is enjoined by One who 
 has the right to command us and who ex- 
 ercises his right for our interest. The all- 
 sufificient reason, in both cases, is found in 
 the character of him whom we trust and 
 obey. I am assuming, of course, that the 
 Christian, upon grounds which he deems 
 reasonable, has accepted the Bible as a 
 revelation from God, and that by the use 
 of his reasonable faculties he has ascer- 
 tained what is the testimony of the Bible 
 on any given point of truth or duty. 
 Then, I say, the act of receiving this testi- 
 mony without further questioning or argu- 
 ment is entirely reasonable. Speculation 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 55 
 
 and debate should end when God speaks. 
 This state of mind, this docihty and sub- 
 missiveness of temper, of which I am 
 speaking, is a condition essential to the 
 profitable studying of the Scriptures. For 
 the mind must be trustingly and lovingly 
 placed in the hands of a teacher in order 
 to be taught. Doubt and suspicion enter- 
 tained in regard to the source from which 
 information is sought will impair the com- 
 pleteness of the result, if they do not 
 defeat it altogether. They will be like 
 obstructions in the mouth of the vessel 
 we are attempting to fill, or like pebbles 
 in the mass of clay we are trying to mould 
 into symmetrical form. 
 
 It may be added to this that the enjoy- 
 ment which the mind feels in reposing with 
 an assurance upon the trustworthiness of 
 a teacher is necessary to a full impression 
 of anything communicated to it. We fre- 
 quently use the phrase '' restmg upon 
 testimony," and use it in two senses — first, 
 that of confiding in it as a genuine ground 
 of belief; and second, that of deriving 
 from it a sense of comfort and repose. 
 
56 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 Where there is no " resting " in the latter of 
 these senses, there is probably none in the 
 former of them. Certainly, no adequate im- 
 pression of the thing testified can be made 
 upon the mind. It is the boast of the Roman- 
 ist that in accepting the dogma of the infal- 
 libility of the Church he is relieved of all 
 uneasiness or risks in his belief. To be safe 
 he has simply to believe what the Church 
 tells him to believe. If he can accept 
 this dogma, he undoubtedly does experience 
 this relief. Now, the temper in which the 
 Romanist rests upon the testimony of the 
 Church is that in which the Christian 
 should rest upon the testimony of the 
 Bible. It is resting which brings with it a 
 sense of comfort and repose, and it does 
 this because it is the resting of a true faith. 
 In the possession of this temper the stu- 
 dent will approach the Bible with that 
 cordial reliance upon its truthfulness and 
 competency, and with that freedom from 
 all forms of strife with its teachings, which 
 will prepare him like an empty vessel to 
 be filled, or like the plastic clay to be 
 moulded into figure. 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 5/ 
 
 The disposition I am recommending is 
 not inconsistent with a sense of surprise in 
 the mind of the reader at particular things 
 with which he meets in the Bible. He may 
 be rationally forced to admit to himself 
 every now and then, "This is a strange 
 incident," or *' This is a hard saying ;" but 
 the obstacles of faith which a minute and 
 shortsighted criticism might find in such 
 enigmatical passages will disappear in a 
 moment before the evidence for the cred- 
 ibility of the book which blazes like sun- 
 light in the general facts of its history, its 
 attributes, its contents, its aptitudes, its 
 correspondences with the facts of life and 
 nature, its varied uses as a factor in society, 
 and its beneficent effects upon human 
 character and destiny. To conclude, from 
 the occasional features in it which we do 
 not understand, that all this body of evi- 
 dence is worthless would be as unreason- 
 able as to affirm that a watch was no safe 
 and useful index of time because there 
 were parts of its structure which the 
 observer could not see to be consistent 
 with its plan or conducive to its result. 
 
58 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 V. 
 
 The Bible should be read with a convic- 
 tion that in it there is lodged a power to 
 confer upon the faithful student certain and 
 manifold benefits. 
 
 This is simply to use it as a means of 
 grace or as one of the instrumentalities 
 through which God is accustomed to bestow 
 spiritual benefits. The passages which 
 ascribe a capacity and a potency of this 
 kind to the Scriptures are almost innumer- 
 able. David, in the nineteenth psalm, from 
 verse 7 to verse 10, represents them as 
 charged with an energy as diversified and 
 as efficacious as that of the sun. They 
 convert the soul, make wise the simple, 
 rejoice the heart and enlighten the eyes. 
 In Jer. xxiii. 29 the word of the Lord is 
 likened to a fire and to a hammer that 
 break the rock in pieces. Our Lord says 
 (John vi. 63), "The words that I speak 
 unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." 
 St. Paul reminds Timothy (2 Tim. iii. 15) 
 that the Holy Scriptures are able to 
 make him ** wise unto salvation ;" and in 
 addressing the Ephesian elders (Acts xx. 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 59 
 
 22) he commends them "to God and the 
 word of his grace/' which is able to build 
 them up and to give them an inheritance 
 among all them that are sanctified. Jesus, 
 in his intercession for his disciples (John 
 xvii. 17), prays, "Sanctify them through thy 
 truth : thy word is truth." Such expres- 
 sions must be stripped of their natural 
 significance if we do not understand them 
 to teach that in the Bible there is a property 
 which is peculiar to it, and which makes it 
 capable of communicating gracious influ- 
 ences to the reader using it aright, such 
 as are not to be expected from any other 
 book. 
 
 This property, I need hardly say, is not 
 magical, such as an ignorant devotee sup- 
 poses to belong to a consecrated candle 
 or to the water of the Ganges. The mere 
 use of the letter of the Bible or the mere 
 mechanical reading of it will not secure 
 the exercise of it. It is simply the result 
 of God's blessing upon the honest and the 
 earnest effort of the soul to know his will 
 and to enjoy communion with him. The 
 effect of a conviction of the realitv of it is, 
 
6o FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 not to produce superstition, but to encour- 
 age and enliven faith and to induce in the 
 mind of the student, as often as he takes up 
 the sacred record, the same feeHng of pleas- 
 ant expectancy which one carries with him 
 when he strikes the cords of an instrument 
 for the purpose of obtaining musical sounds, 
 or when he opens the shutter of a dark 
 room for the purpose of admitting light. 
 There is implied in such a feeling a motive 
 which looks beyond mere entertainment, 
 or even the acquisition of knowledge, and 
 seeks and expects from the reading of the 
 Scriptures a spiritual refreshment and 
 invigoration analogous to that helpful in- 
 spiration of the body which is sought 
 and expected from the inhaling of the 
 sea-breeze or the mountain-air. Like the 
 blessing of the new wine which the prophet 
 says (Isa. Ixv.) 8 is found in a cluster of 
 grapes, so it may be said to the believer, as 
 often as he handles God's word, " Touch it 
 thankfully, touch it hopefully ; for there is 
 a blessing in it." 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 6 J 
 
 VI. 
 
 With this conviction, the Christian should 
 study the Bible with a solemn impression 
 that he is dealing with that which the Holy 
 Spirit uses as the means of his supernatural 
 working. 
 
 That the soul of the Christian is the 
 subject of this supernatural working from 
 the beginning to the completion of its 
 spiritual history is so clearly taught in the 
 Scriptures that I need not pause to show 
 the proof of the doctrine. The point with 
 which I am concerned is the further doc- 
 trine of Scripture that it is in connection 
 with the truths of revelation that this work- 
 ing is ordinarily (at least) carried on. This 
 procedure is due to two facts — first, that 
 the Holy Spirit operates upon the soul in 
 accordance with, and not in violation of, 
 the laws of its nature ; and second, that it 
 is one of these laws that the soul, in order 
 to be in a rieht state, should be in a^ree- 
 
 <_> ' o 
 
 ment with the truth. To bring it into a 
 right state, therefore — which is what the 
 Holy Spirit undertakes to do — it must be 
 made to see, to accept and to feel the truth. 
 
62 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 When, for instance, the Holy Spirit would 
 lead the soul out of a state of sinfulness 
 into one of holiness, he must convince it 
 that its former state is at variance with the 
 truth, and that its latter state is in harmony 
 with the truth ; he must show it that the 
 one is a false way and the other a right 
 way. It is through a perception of the 
 truth and an acknowledgment of the truth 
 that the change is to be effected. " Thy 
 word is truth," says the Saviour; and the 
 word of God is the Bible. In entire con- 
 sistency, therefore, with the nature of the 
 soul, the Holy Spirit works with and through 
 the contents of the Bible. In the use of 
 the Bible men must seek for and expect 
 his supernatural aid. Those right percep- 
 tions, right affections, right principles and 
 right purposes which the Holy Spirit would 
 implant in the heart he will introduce there 
 by applying to the heart the truths of the 
 Bible. And the Bible is to be read, there- 
 fore, with a constant and serious recognition 
 of the power of the Holy Spirit as present 
 in it and as concurrent with the exercise 
 of reading it. Such a recognition was 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LLVING. 63 
 
 certainly in the Psalmist's mind when he 
 prayed (Ps. cxix. i8), ''Open thou mine 
 eyes that I may behold wondrous things 
 out of thy law ;" and it was no less clearly 
 in the apostle's mind when he told the 
 Corinthians (i Cor. ii. 14) that "the 
 things of the Spirit of God are to be 
 spiritually discerned," or apprehended by 
 a discernment communicated by the Spirit ; 
 and that their faith stood not in the wis- 
 dom of man, but in the power of God, be- 
 cause it was in the " demonstration of the 
 Spirit" that the gospel had been preached 
 to them and received by them. 
 
 This connection of the Holy Spirit's in- 
 fluence with the use of the Bible suggests 
 not only the habit of looking for his aid, 
 but the duty of asking for it. The offices 
 of the Holy Spirit are specially to be 
 sought for by prayer (Luke xi. 13) ; hence 
 the reading of the Bible should be accom- 
 panied with prayer for divine light The 
 success of the exercise, any one can see, 
 largely depends upon the temper of mind 
 with which the Scriptures are at any time 
 studied and upon the manner in which the 
 
64 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 truths it presents strike the mind. Here, 
 in determining this temper and this man- 
 ner, is a place for the interposition of the 
 Holy Spirit. A simple and earnest plead- 
 ing for the benefit of this interposition will 
 show both that the student is eagerly seek- 
 ing the knowledge of God's word and that 
 he is relying in his search, not upon the 
 *' wisdom of man " merely, but upon the 
 " power of God." Forgetfulness of this 
 latter duty or a presumptuous confidence 
 in his own intellectual sufficiency may lead 
 a man into the grave offence of " quench- 
 ing the Spirit " even when professedly en- 
 gaged in the study of the things of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The study of the Bible implies that the 
 reading of it is followed by meditation. 
 
 It is the thinking of a thing which fastens 
 it in the mind and causes it to take effect 
 upon the mind. "While I was musing," 
 says the Psalmist (Ps. xxxix. 3), "the fire 
 burned." All that has been heretofore 
 said of the nature and capacities of the 
 
THE RULE OF REIJGIOUS LJVING. 65 
 
 Bible is enouorh to show that there are 
 results to be reached through the study 
 of it which are real, and that they are 
 worth an earnest effort to attain them. 
 They are likened to hid treasure and de- 
 serve to be sought for by patient effort. 
 Meditation is the precise effort of the 
 mind, not only to uncover the contents 
 of the Bible and to satisfy the intelligence 
 as to whether they are there and as to 
 what their import is, but to make them 
 actually the possession of the student. It 
 is the process by which we give life and 
 force to the things which the Scripture 
 reveals. It is not simply acquisitive, aim- 
 ing to gain a knowledge of what is written, 
 nor simply inquisitive, aiming to find out 
 the exact value of words and meaning 
 of propositions. It may include these or 
 presuppose them, but it goes beyond them. 
 It is the feeding upon food already provid- 
 ed and prepared rather than the providing 
 and preparing of it. It is a sort of rumi- 
 nation upon what is already accepted by 
 the mind as true and understood. 
 
 This is a complex process involving acts 
 
66 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 of perception, memory, attention and re- 
 fiective application. It requires a frank, 
 docile, truthful and devout frame of mind. 
 The object and the result of it are to 
 transfer the sentiment of the Bible to the 
 heart of the reader, so that the force of 
 whatever kind which belongs to it shall 
 be felt and responded to by the heart. 
 Hence, as a rule for Christians, it may be 
 stated that it is better to read a short 
 portion of the Bible with due meditation 
 than much in an unintelHgent and cursory 
 way. Some good men have adopted the 
 plan of selecting at the beginning of each 
 year a single verse as a motto to be kept 
 before their minds during the year, and 
 have found it a spring of living water 
 affording fresh thoughts and healthful in- 
 spirations each day. 
 
 Difficulties, I am aware, in the way of 
 connecting meditation with the reading of 
 the Scriptures arise, sometimes from a lack 
 of aptitude for such an exercise, of which 
 a person is conscious, and more frequently 
 from the sense of irksomeness which at- 
 tends it. Mental work of any kind, to 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING, 6/ 
 
 one not trained to it, is confessedly embar- 
 rassing and distasteful. Hence, many who 
 read their Bibles never ponder in their 
 hearts the things they have read. They 
 are like the man of whom St. James speaks 
 (i. 23) who beholds his natural face in a 
 glass, and then goes his way and '' straight- 
 way forgetteth what manner of man he 
 was." An honest Christian, however, will 
 feel, in the case of the word of God, that 
 no trouble in the effort to understand it 
 can be an excuse for declining the effort. 
 
 For the encouragement of the weak 
 disciple it may be mentioned that the 
 mind is very easily put under the con- 
 trol of regulated habit, and that the very 
 revelation of great and inspiring truths to 
 the soul often seems to quicken the intel- 
 lect and to endow even an uncultured 
 mind with aptitudes and energies of which 
 it was never before conscious. Even babes, 
 under the illumination of the Holy Spirit, 
 may acquire the faculty of understanding 
 things which are hid from the naturally 
 wise and prudent. 
 
 The greatest obstacle which will beset 
 
68 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 the duty I am recommending will probably 
 be found, in the insatiable demands of 
 worldly business. The Christian will be 
 in danger of concluding that he has no 
 time for meditating upon what he reads 
 in the word of God, and therefore is under 
 no obligation to concern himself with the 
 attempt. This danger needs to be rec- 
 ognized and to be guarded against. 
 
 Let it be noticed that meditation is not 
 literal reading and does not require the pres- 
 ence of a book, and that it is not technical 
 study and does not require the seclusion of a 
 closet nor the facilities of a library. It is 
 simply the working of the mind, and may 
 be performed, to some extent, wherever 
 the mind is. What should prevent the 
 performing of it, therefore, even in the 
 place of business ? Why should not some 
 text lodged in the mind in the morning be 
 summoned from the memory, looked at 
 and thought over a hundred times in the 
 day? Why should it not be at hand, like 
 the watch in one's pocket, to be consulted 
 from hour to hour? Even the hard sea- 
 beach over which the incoming wave rolls 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 69 
 
 back again, withdrawing its volume as rap- 
 idly as it poured it in, will show here and 
 there a cavity in which will sparkle a litde 
 pool of crystal water left by the receding 
 tide. Surely the busiest soul, washed over 
 merely, as it may seem to have been, by 
 the truths of God's word which it has hur- 
 riedly surveyed, may here and there find 
 a receptacle in which some portion of the 
 sacred element may be retained, upon 
 which the spirit may slake its thirst even 
 amidst the bustle of the street or the 
 crowding cares of the workshop or the 
 office. At all events, the rest of the Sab- 
 bath will give to every Christian an oppor- 
 tunity for meditating upon the Scriptures, 
 and the proper improvement of this op- 
 portunity will in all probability create a 
 habit which will extend such meditation 
 into the weekday life. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 A few suggestions as to the method of 
 studying the Bible may be added to this 
 exposition of the nature of the process. 
 
 First. The Bible is to be read regularly 
 
70 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 as a whole. The most obvious way for 
 accomplishing this would appear to be to 
 begin at the beginning and read it con- 
 tinuously through to the end. This way 
 is very commonly pursued by religious 
 people, and many can report that within 
 a lifetime they have read the book through 
 an almost incredible number of times. 
 Such a way, however, seems to lose sight 
 of the principle that the Bible is to be read, 
 not for the sake of the reading of it, but 
 for the sake of the uses which the reading 
 of it may serve. To get a use from the 
 reading of it, it will be found advantageous 
 to divide it into sections and read success- 
 ively a portion from each. A convenient 
 division will be into: (i) The historical 
 writings of the Old Testament, from Gen- 
 esis to Job ; (2) The poetical writings of 
 the same, including the prophets ; (3) The 
 evangelical writings, composed of the four 
 Gospels and the Acts ; (4) The didactic 
 writings, consisting of the Epistles and 
 Revelation. Each reader, however, can 
 make the division accordinof to his own 
 view of expediency. The object of this 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 7 1 
 
 recommendation is to secure such a variety 
 in the instruction obtained from the Bible 
 as may suit the varying wants of the soul. 
 These wants can hardly be provided for 
 from day to day by the contents of any 
 single one of the inspired books. Would 
 it not be better for the reader's mind, for 
 instance, after having been studying the 
 structure of the tabernacle in Exodus, to 
 turn to the confessions of the fifty-first 
 psalm or to the touching parables of Luke 
 
 XV. ? 
 
 Secondly. It will be an advantage to the 
 reader to infor^n himself of the autho7^ship 
 of the book he is reading and of the circum- 
 stances of the age and country to which it 
 relates. Such letters as those written by 
 St. Paul to the Corinthians can be much 
 better understood when the mind carries 
 along with the reading of them a clear 
 conception of the social condition of the 
 people to whom they were addressed. 
 Such information can easily be obtained 
 from the expository works which are now 
 so numerous. 
 
 Thirdly. The Bible is the best interpreter of 
 
72 FOLLOWING CLLRIST. 
 
 itself. It Is an exceedingly useful practice 
 to compare, by the aid of " marginal refer- 
 ences," one passage with another. Such 
 comparisons help not only to solve par- 
 ticular difficulties, but to bring out in an 
 interesting way the unity of Scripture. If 
 the truth at one point seems to be locked 
 up in obscurity, the key to it may be found 
 at another point, showing that the same 
 Spirit is the author of both. 
 
 Fourthly. The language of the Bible in 
 important texts should be committed to mem- 
 ory. Language is the channel through 
 which thought and emotion flow, and a 
 good channel facilitates the flow of thought 
 and emotion. Scripture phrases coming 
 readily to the mind are thus aids to de- 
 votion. They furnish the wheels upon 
 which the soul moves most comfortably 
 and safely in prayer. 
 
 Fifthly. It is well frequently to arrest the 
 mind at certain points and compel it to i^efiect 
 that it is dealing not merely with a book, but 
 with facts ; not merely with poetic conceits 
 or abst7^act propositions, but zvith living 
 truths. Let the thought often challenge 
 
THE RULE OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. 73 
 
 the attention of the reader : " The Jehovah 
 who spake to Moses is the God who still 
 speaks to me ;" " The Jesus who conversed 
 with Nicodemus is still uttering the same 
 doctrine to me." Such a habit will serve 
 to bring home the teachings of the Bible 
 to the reader personally. 
 
 Sixthly. // is an adventitious, hit not an 
 improper, aid in studying the Bible to invest 
 particular parts and passages of it with 
 associations which are precious to the reader » 
 By this process human history becomes in- 
 terwoven with the word of God, and the 
 sacred volume becomes dearer to us be- 
 cause enshrined in sacred recollections and 
 experiences : " This book or this chapter 
 brings back the image of a sainted parent 
 whose tongue was wont to recite it with 
 rapturous tones in my youthful ears ;" "This 
 verse contains the sunbeam which led a 
 distinguished reformer or evangelist out 
 of darkness into light ;" " This fragment 
 of a psalm became a song of triumph on 
 a martyr's lips ;" " This gracious promise 
 brought the balm of consolation to my 
 heart long years ago when crushed with 
 
74 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 the weight of some great sorrow ;" " This 
 petition is perfumed with the memory of 
 some pious friend whose panting after God 
 it expressed;" ''This vision of the heaven- 
 ly city revealed its opened gates and shin- 
 ing streets to the eye of some sufferer 
 amidst the agonies of a dying-bed." It is 
 wonderful how many things in the life of 
 an individual may thus link themselves to 
 the holy book, and may throw around it 
 the drapery of sweet and tender thoughts 
 and feelings. Thus it may be made what 
 no other book can be — a personal friend, 
 a sharer in our private joys and sorrows, 
 a kinsman dividing with us the secret life 
 of the soul. Such associations, like a 
 chime of holy earth-born melodies blend- 
 ing with the voice of God, deserve to be 
 cherished, as they both add to the attract- 
 iveness and enhance the efficiency of the 
 Bible. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OBSERVANCE OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 
 
 CHRIST was so conspicuously a wor- 
 shiper of God and an attendant upon 
 public worship that no one can be a fol- 
 lower of him without imitating him in this 
 respect. Besides his example, he has given 
 his disciples a form of prayer, and a form 
 which seems to imply that they will wor- 
 ship in companies. Indeed, it may be 
 asked how any one can believe that the 
 Lord is " great and greatly to be praised," 
 as every believer in Christ must, without 
 being moved in some outspoken way to 
 magnify and praise him. 
 
 The mere act and the mere word of 
 worship are, we know, of no value in his 
 sight. Without the spirit and the under- 
 standing, our oblations are vain and our 
 incense is an abomination unto him (Isa. i. 
 
 76 
 
76 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 13). But the fact that the offering of 
 formal worship without the participation 
 of the soul is an offence to God does not 
 prove that formal worship in which the 
 soul does participate is not acceptable to 
 God and may be required by him. 
 
 The proper definition of the word " wor- 
 ship" is "the acknowledgment by one party 
 of the worth of another." The worship of 
 the Almighty is the acknowledgment by 
 man of God's infinite worth. Worth is 
 entitled to recognition wherever it is found. 
 Not to recognize it is evidence, in any party, 
 of moral blindness or obliquity, and is an 
 exhibition of injustice which is positively 
 criminal. The duty of worshiping God is 
 only the active phase of the duty of be- 
 lieving in God. 
 
 Hear how the Scriptures speak of him : 
 " O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy 
 name in all the earth " (Ps. viii. 11);" Worthy 
 is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power 
 and riches and wisdom and strength and 
 honor and glory and blessing," is said of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ (Rev. v. 12). 
 
 Excellence and worth so transcendant 
 
OBSERVANCE OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 7/ 
 
 are entitled to receive proper acknowledg- 
 ment at the hands of men. How can a 
 man be a religious man without acknowl- 
 edging them ? The only question that 
 can possibly be entertained is, " How are 
 such excellence and such worth to be ac- 
 knowledged ?" 
 
 The answer to this question is, first, by 
 an intelligent apprehension of them and 
 a complacent appreciation of them by the 
 soul. The organ of acknowledgment must 
 undoubtedly be an enlightened and approv- 
 ing soul. But the utterance in some formal 
 way of what the soul believes and feels is 
 always a natural exercise, and is — ordina- 
 rily, at least — a condition necessary to dis- 
 tinctness of belief and vividness of feelingr. 
 Hence, to this first answer a second is to 
 be joined : God's excellence and worth are 
 to be acknowledged in every formal way 
 in which the soul can express its belief in 
 and its feeling toward them. The act, the 
 word, the sensible demonstration, consti- 
 tuted as man now is, are co-ordinate factors 
 with the thought and the emotion, and help, 
 with the latter, to call out and to call forth 
 
78 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 the life of the soul. Man is not yet capable 
 of living as a pure spirit, and needs the aid 
 of formal expression to keep up his sense 
 of God's excellence and worth. So long 
 as the expression serves this purpose — 
 really serves it, and serves no other pur- 
 pose — it is a valuable help, not to say a 
 necessary one, to spiritual life. Public 
 worship is such an expression, or, rather, a 
 combination of such expressions. Proper- 
 ly conducted, it is a celebration of God's 
 excellence and worth. It is enjoined, not 
 because God needs the praise of man, but 
 because it is due from man, becoming in 
 man and profitable to man. 
 
 So far as appears from Scripture, God 
 has always been worshiped by formal rites. 
 These rites are the monuments by which 
 he asserts his claim to faith and reverence 
 and honor in the eyes of an apostate world. 
 They are the testimony in behalf of relig- 
 ion which he causes to be proclaimed in the 
 ears of the unbelieving generations of men. 
 For a Christian to disown his obligation to 
 attend upon the public worship of God is 
 to discredit these monuments and to con- 
 
OBSERVANCE OF PUBLIC IVORSHIP. 79 
 
 tradict this testimony. To say that he does 
 not need the influence of it himself is to 
 betray an ignorance of the wants of his 
 own soul ; to say that the world does not 
 need it is to exhibit an indifference to the 
 wants of his race. Such incongruities will 
 be shunned by every honest follower of 
 Christ. As the Son of God, during his 
 human life, kept the holy days and fre- 
 quented the synagogue and the temple 
 as a faithful Israelite, no man claiming to 
 be his disciple can conscientiously fail to 
 keep the Christian Sabbath and frequent 
 the place where God is worshiped accord- 
 ing to the law of .the New Testament. 
 
 I. 
 
 The observance of public worship ought 
 to be classed by the young Christian among 
 those moral duties which he has engaged 
 to perform. It rests upon an ordinance 
 of God as distinctly as do the commands 
 which require him to be honest and charita- 
 ble in his dealings with his neighbor. It is 
 a part of the peculiar work which is given 
 him as a professor of religion to do. It is 
 
8o FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 not something left to the taste or the fancy 
 or the convenience of the individual ; it is 
 what the Lord expects from every one of 
 his servants. He evidently requires his 
 worship to be maintained in the world : 
 " Ye shall keep my Sabbaths, and rever- 
 ence my sanctuary: I am the Lord" (Lev. 
 xxvi. 2). 
 
 Now, by whom is this to be done ? " By 
 the church," it may be answered ; yet what 
 is the church but the aggregate of the liv- 
 ing men and women in any generation or 
 community? Let these living men and 
 women neglect the worship of God, and 
 where is the church which will keep it up ? 
 The church is realized in each one of these 
 men and women, and the obligations of the 
 church rest upon each one of them. The 
 divine ordinance which calls for a worship- 
 ing church is simply a call to each church- 
 member to be a worshiper. Let the 
 church-member remember this, and from 
 the moment of his entering the church 
 let him place this duty foremost among 
 those forms of business to which his life 
 is to be devoted. 
 
OBSERVAXCE OF PUBLIC WORSHIP 8 I 
 
 I use the term "business" in this con- 
 nection because I have observed that what 
 is technically called "business" is the most 
 frequent obstacle in the way of the perform- 
 ance of this duty of public worship. The 
 excuse which in his own view most effect- 
 ually justifies a man in neglecting- this duty 
 is that his "business" forbids it. He would 
 be ashamed to say that his pleasure or his 
 indolence forbade it, but "business" has 
 something respectable — almost sacred — in 
 it ; for is not he who provides not for his 
 own said to be worse than an infidel? (i 
 Tim. V. 8.) 
 
 The mistake here is in making a distinc- 
 tion between business and the worship of 
 God. The Christian's business compre- 
 hends the doing of all his heavenly Father's 
 will, and it is as much his heavenly Father's 
 will that his worship should be observed by 
 his people as that their families should be 
 supported by diligence in their secular call- 
 ings. If any distinction is to be made be- 
 tween the two, the former should take pre- 
 cedence of the latter ; the business which 
 concerns God should claim attention before 
 
82 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 that which concerns man. The Saviour 
 directed an unsparing rebuke at this dis- 
 position to place devotion to worldly busi- 
 ness over religious duty when he said to 
 the rich young man (Matt. xix. 21), "Go 
 sell that thou hast, and come and follow 
 me." Worldly business must retire when 
 religious business presents its claims. The 
 man too busy at his counter or in his office 
 or his workshop to attend upon the worship 
 of God is in the most notorious sense a 
 neglecter of his business as a Christian. 
 
 The same is true of the. man who ex- 
 cuses himself from attendance upon Sab- 
 bath worship on the ground that on the 
 Sabbath his overtaxed mind and his weary 
 body are unfit to participate in its services. 
 Has he a right so to disqualify himself for 
 God's business, by overtaxing his mind 
 and by wearying his body in the prosecu- 
 tion of his own calling? There is a use 
 of "the mammon of unrighteousness," the 
 Saviour teaches (Luke xvi. 9), which can 
 make "friends" to the believer or helpers 
 in securing admittance for him to " ever- 
 lasting habitations," but surely it cannot 
 
OBSERVANCE OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 83 
 
 be such a use as robs God of the service 
 due to him. Oh, let the follower of Christ 
 be warned of this device of Satan, and let 
 him see to it that in his devotion to his 
 worldly business he does not become a 
 defaulter to his Master. His success in 
 his religious life will largely depend upon 
 his fidelity in this particular. 
 
 The ordinary occupations of life create 
 a perpetual drain upon spiritual strength. 
 Worship — public worship— is needed to re- 
 pair the waste. Not only the Sabbath ser- 
 vices, but the lecture and the prayer-meet- 
 ing of the week, are needed for this pur- 
 pose. These religious episodes are tonics 
 to the soul. They meet the Christian in 
 the midst of his working-days with solaces 
 as timely and as refreshing as those which 
 the Israelites found in the wells and the 
 palm trees of Elim : "They that wait upon 
 the Lord shall renew their strength " (Isa. 
 xl. 21). The habit of attending upon pub- 
 lic worship, once formed, will cause the 
 difficulties which obstruct it to vanish, and 
 will make an abundant compensation for 
 all the effort it costs, both in the relief it 
 
84 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 will give to the sense of duty and In the 
 supply it will furnish to the needs of the 
 soul. 
 
 II. 
 
 The worshiping of God is so serious a 
 business that it calls for forethougrht and 
 preparation. 
 
 The disposition to engage in it as a 
 mere matter of routine or custom, without 
 a conscious impression of its meaning, may 
 easily arise from the fact that the mind is 
 so often called to the performance of the 
 duty. Week after week, Sabbath after 
 Sabbath, throughout the year, at a regular 
 hour, the worshiper is summoned to the 
 house of God. That each occasion should 
 present itself with a fresh interest and 
 should stir the heart with a felt attractive- 
 ness, it is necessary that the attention should 
 be directed to the work in hand and that the 
 soul should be strung, by a process of re- 
 flection, with well-tuned chords. Levity of 
 mind is, of course, at open variance with 
 the idea of worship ; vacancy of mind is 
 hardly less so. With good reason, there- 
 fore, the counsel was given by them of old 
 
OBSERVANCE OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 85 
 
 time : " Be not rash with thy mouth, and let 
 not thine heart be hasty to utter anything 
 before God" (Eccl. v. 21). What is said 
 and what is done in worship ought to be 
 said and done with deHberation, in a re- 
 Hgious spirit and with a rehgious intent. 
 As no man rationally enters upon a grave 
 enterprise without contemplating the nature 
 of it and the mental conditions it requires 
 in the party engaging in it, so the Christian 
 should seriously strive to put himself in 
 frame for such an act as the worship of 
 God. He should never precipitate him- 
 self into it in a rash or hasty manner. 
 
 Very obviously, in this endeavor after 
 self-preparation, he should by prayer in- 
 voke those gracious inspirations which 
 come from- Him with whom are " the prep- 
 aration of the heart, and the answer of 
 the tongue" (Prov. xvi. i). No truly de- 
 vout man will fail to take account of his 
 own infirmities when he proposes to ap- 
 proach God in worship. The promised 
 aids of the Holy Spirit will never seem 
 more seasonable than then, and they will 
 be definitely sought by prayer. 
 
86 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 In this connection it may not be amiss 
 to say that in churches where Hturgies 
 are not used in pubHc worship there is a 
 special call for effort and culture on the 
 part of the individual engaging in the 
 work. While it is the task of the minister 
 to direct the current of devotion, it is the 
 task of the hearer, in order to be a wor- 
 shiper, to throw his mind into that current. 
 This requires closeness of attention and 
 control of thought. The invitation, "Let 
 us pray," should be responded to by each 
 worshiper with the determination to make 
 the prayer about to be uttered his own. 
 In the reading of the Scriptures it is un- 
 doubtedly an aid to the object in view for 
 the hearer to have his own Bible at hand 
 and to follow the officiating minister. 
 
 The service of psalmody is emphatically 
 the service of the people. It is the duty 
 of every church-member as far as possible 
 to take part in it. The objection of inabil- 
 ity, so often raised, only lays the ground 
 for another remark — viz., that it is the duty 
 of every church-member to make it a study 
 to be able to take part in it. It belongs to 
 
OBSERVANCE OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 8/ 
 
 his business as a Christian man to educate 
 himself for this work, and, if he be a parent, 
 to educate his children for it. It is a per- 
 version of this divine ordinance when the 
 congregation delegates the execution of it 
 to a choir, and, instead of singing praise 
 to God, expect to be sung to themselves. 
 Rightly considered, there is as much rea- 
 son for the petition, " Lord, teach us to 
 sing," as there is for the petition, '' Lord, 
 teach us to pray ;" for singing is essentially 
 the same act as praying. There is room 
 for the question whether the absence of 
 spiritual power which is so frequently de- 
 plored in our churches is not due to the 
 failure of Christian people to do their duty 
 in this branch of worship. Certainly, a 
 company of professed w^orshipers indo- 
 lently sitting in their pews to be enter- 
 tained by a musical performance are more 
 likely to repel than to invite the offices of 
 the divine Inspirer. 
 
 III. 
 The spirit of worship should be as dis- 
 tinctly carried into the hearing of the word 
 
8S FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 preached as into the purely devotional 
 parts of the service. 
 
 It is a mistake, and a hurtful one, to sup- 
 pose that in listening to the sermon we 
 have ceased to maintain communion with 
 God. It is he who has then become the 
 party speaking, and it may be that in the 
 utterances then and there addressed to us 
 he may make a response to the very aspi- 
 rations which have ascended to him in our 
 praises and prayers. 
 
 The distinction which is sometimes made 
 between the formally devotional service 
 and the sermon in public worship, and the 
 tone of depreciation with which the latter 
 is, in certain quarters, spoken of, are the 
 offspring of ignorance. The teaching of 
 the law of the Lord seems always to have 
 been closely associated with the worship 
 of God, and the reason for the connection 
 is founded In the nature of religion. Wor- 
 ship, to be a religious act, must be the ex- 
 pression of right views, convictions and feel- 
 ings In regard to God ; without these it is 
 an empty and a worthless ceremony. These 
 It Is the office of preaching to supply and 
 
OBSERVANCE OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 89 
 
 to cultivate. Instruction in the things of 
 God is the natural purveyor of the material 
 required for devotion, and in its work goes 
 hand in hand with literal worship. And, 
 conversely, it may be said that preaching 
 needs the aid of worship. Without it the 
 instructions of the pulpit may enrich the 
 intelligence without exciting the spiritual 
 affections ; with it they plant themselves in 
 the soul as quickened forms of faith, and 
 become real and vital forces through the 
 medium of speech and emotion. The work 
 of the minister, therefore, wisely compre- 
 hends both functions — that of directing the 
 devotions of the people, and that of preach- 
 ing to them the word of God. 
 
 The hearing of the word preached is to 
 be attended to with substantially the same 
 frame of mind as that with which direct 
 worship is to be performed. The object 
 of the preacher, if he understands his call- 
 ing, is to report and to give effect to the 
 truth which God has revealed; the duty of 
 the hearer is to get, through the preacher, 
 a better knowledge and a clearer impres- 
 sion of this truth. The thing which the 
 
90 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 preacher has to do is to deHver a message 
 from God ; the business of the hearer is 
 to look for it, appropriate it and carry it 
 away with him. In order to this, the coun- 
 sels given in a previous chapter in regard 
 to the study of the Bible may profitably be 
 followed. 
 
 In addition, I would offer the following 
 suggestions : 
 
 First. The worshiper should examine 
 himself before going to the house of God 
 as to his motive and purpose, and should 
 endeavor to make it his definite errand to 
 honor God and to obtain religious instruc- 
 tion. This process is an easy one, within 
 the power of everybody, and is necessary 
 in order to make '* eoincr to church " a 
 rational act. 
 
 Second, The ear and the heart should 
 be prepared by prayer for the parts they 
 are to take in the service. 
 
 Third. Peculiarities in the preacher, fa- 
 vorable or unfavorable, should not be suf- 
 fered to divert the mind from the appre- 
 ciation of the truth presented. A genuine 
 appetite will relish food even when con- 
 
OBSERVANCE OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 9 1 
 
 veyed in a homely vessel, and will never 
 miss the food through admiration of an 
 attractive vessel. 
 
 Fourth. After the hearing of the sermon 
 the mind should be questioned as to the 
 profit gained by a review of its contents 
 and by meditation upon them. 
 
 Fifth. The impression of the word preach- 
 ed should be fixed and deepened by con- 
 versation upon it with other serious per- 
 sons. 
 
 Sixth. Prayer for the quickening influ- 
 ences of the Holy Spirit should be offered 
 up, that the seed sown may take root in 
 the hearer's heart and bring forth appro- 
 priate fruit. 
 
 By efforts like these the preaching of 
 the word may be expected to become what 
 it was designed to be — a means of edifica- 
 tion, a source of sanctifying grace and an 
 invaluable help to the Christian seeking 
 to understand the will and to acquire the 
 mind of his Master. The faithful hearing 
 of God's word is enough like prayer to 
 be entitled to a share in all the promises 
 made to prayer, and the man who goes to 
 
92 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 it, as he goes to his knees, asking from 
 God the bread of life, may be sure he will 
 never be sent away empty. 
 
 " What man is there of you, whom if his 
 son ask bread, will he give him a stone ?" 
 (Matt. vii. 9.) 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 PRIVATE PRAYER. 
 
 THE professor of religion who does 
 not pray in private is no more the 
 being which that title describes than is the 
 infant, who has never breathed, a living 
 child. It is impossible to know God, to 
 believe in him and to love him, without 
 holding intercourse with him by definite 
 and intelligent acts of the soul. 
 
 The arguments by which the reasonable- 
 ness and the utility of prayer to God are 
 demonstrated are numerous and sufficient 
 to satisfy any ingenuous mind. But the 
 necessity for argument is superseded here 
 by the fact that man is constrained to pray 
 by the moral constitution which naturally 
 belongs to him. Language of entreaty or 
 deprecation oftentimes instinctively bursts 
 from the lips of those who have denied 
 the being of a God and have been wont 
 
94 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 to laugh at the folly of those who prayed 
 to him. 
 
 Indeed, so potent is the law by which 
 men are impelled to pray that under its 
 conscious pressure they are liable to be 
 carried into excesses in their practice of 
 the duty. Their need of prayer is felt 
 at so many points that it seeks to relieve 
 itself by multiplying objects to which prayer 
 can be addressed. Hence, the heathen have 
 invented as many divinities as there are 
 departments of nature and life with which 
 their well-beinof is connected. Not satis- 
 fied with the idea of one god — the all- 
 sufficient object upon which a rational faith 
 is content to rest — they have amplified that 
 idea until it includes as many gods as a 
 superstitious fancy is pleased to invent. 
 
 In the same way, the Romish Church, 
 with that consummate sagacity which it 
 has displayed in using every avenue by 
 which the hearts of men may be reached 
 and controlled, has taken advantage of 
 this natural disposition to pray, and has 
 fed and stimulated it by encouraging its 
 members to address their devotions to the 
 
PRIVATE PRAYER, 95 
 
 saints, to the angels and to the Virgin 
 Mary. The readiness with which these 
 false modes of prayer gain circulation 
 proves that there is a genuine thing of 
 which these are counterfeits, and that in 
 man's nature there is a foundation laid for 
 the use of that thing. 
 
 The religious man will be prompted to 
 pray,y^r^/, because of a propensity belong- 
 ing to him as a man ; and second, because 
 this propensity has had a new incitement 
 and a new direction given to it by the new 
 spiritual life which has been imparted to 
 him. The very impulses of his mind and 
 heart in reference to God will take on the 
 form of prayer ; so that there is literal 
 truth in the familiar line, 
 
 " Prayer is the Christian's vital breath," 
 
 And as every affection residing in the 
 soul is strengthened by expression and 
 nourishes itself, as it were, by the terms 
 it uses in orivine itself utterance, so the 
 religious affections need the channel of 
 articulate prayer to keep themselves vig- 
 orous and fresh in the believer's soul. A 
 
96 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 decline in spiritual life will follow a neglect 
 of prayer just as certainly as a plant de- 
 cays when the necessary moisture is with- 
 drawn from its roots. 
 
 Still further, the connection which the 
 Scriptures establish between prayer and 
 the positive blessing of God makes the 
 practice of it a necessity for the Christian 
 coextensive with his wants. Religious liv- 
 ing is a life of entire dependence upon 
 God. That he is an independent agent 
 is one of the illusions under which the 
 natural man lives. He is flattered and 
 deceived by the thought that he is equal 
 to his needs and capable of being the 
 conservator and the architect of his own 
 happiness. It is the characteristic of the 
 spiritual man to find — and to delight to 
 find — all his sufficiency in God. There 
 is such a connection between his daily 
 bread, for instance, and the providence 
 of God that in his toiling for it he sees 
 the propriety of asking God to give it ; 
 and when he has gained it by his toiling, 
 he still feels bound to give God thanks 
 for it. 
 
PKIVAJK PRAYER. 9/ 
 
 Men's needs at all times run in advance 
 of their own resources or carry them be- 
 yond their depth, and so prompt them to 
 call for help outside of and above them- 
 selves. The godless man resists this 
 prompting ; the religious man gladly as- 
 sents to it, and sees among the conditions 
 of success in all his undertakings such a 
 concurrent working of God as presents 
 a definite thing to be prayed for. The 
 convictions which characterize him as a 
 Christian will make him a man of prayer. 
 Christ was pre-eminently this, and those 
 who follow him must be like him in this 
 respect. It is so necessary that the young 
 church-member should pray, and that his 
 praying should be an exercise of the heart, 
 that I w^ould enjoin upon him the following 
 counsels. 
 
 I. 
 
 Let it be yourself ivJio pi^ays. 
 
 By this I mean let prayer be the genuine 
 expression of what you feel and desire ; let 
 your soul be in it. Words, when the soul 
 is in them, are the outoroinas of the man 
 himself; where it is not in them, they are 
 
98 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 but sound — a mechanical result which a 
 rtute could produce. You and the want 
 you bring to God must be one. It was 
 so with the prodigal son ; the shame and 
 the wretchedness under which he was per- 
 ishing exactly reported themselves in the 
 words he addressed to his father. It was 
 so with the Syrophoenician woman ; her 
 daughter's suffering was a source of an 
 agony to her own heart, and all the ap- 
 parent repulses of the Saviour could not 
 check the cry, " Lord, help me." 
 
 In any extreme position of danger or 
 distress It Is easy to see that the whole 
 man is In the desire for relief and will be 
 equally in the prayer that asks for It. It 
 is this presence of self In your prayers 
 which makes them prayers. If they are 
 not yours, they are not prayers at all. 
 The repeating of the best form in the 
 world, where it is not inspirited by your 
 own soul, is not praying. Merely to ''say 
 your prayers" Is to utter ''sayings," not 
 prayers. 
 
 On this account it Is well, before engag- 
 ing in the act of prayer, to pause for a 
 
PRIVATE PRAYER. 99 
 
 moment to interrogate the mind as to the 
 objects it is about to present to God, and 
 as to the sincerity of the desires it professes 
 to entertain for them. 
 
 It is well, further, to learn to express 
 your prayers in words of your own. 
 
 This need not be a difficult task. Ordi- 
 narily, you do not depend upon others to 
 give you the phrases in which you express 
 your thoughts and your feelings. Indeed, 
 such is the law of the mind that in the 
 very process of defining a thought or a 
 feeling to itself it has already clothed it 
 in words. When the Saviour, wearied 
 with his journey, sat by the well at Sychar, 
 he said to the woman who came to draw 
 water, " Give me to drink." Any one suf- 
 fering in the same way could, and would, 
 have said the same. A definite wish is 
 easily put into language ; study is not 
 needed and art would be out of place 
 in the articulatino- of it. 'T thirst" is the 
 feeling of which consciousness takes no- 
 tice in a case like that of our Lord's ; "Give 
 me to drink " is the form of that feeling 
 expressing itself to another in prayer. The 
 
lOO FOLLOWING CIIRIS7\ 
 
 " I " of the feeling reappears in the " me " 
 of the prayer. 
 
 The subject of a feehng can best express 
 that feehng. The simphcity with which it 
 is expressed is no fault. The style of a 
 prayer is a matter of secondary import- 
 ance. For the construction of a prayer 
 the soul wants no rule but the rule of 
 truthfulness ; and the more plain and 
 direct the form of it may be, the more it 
 may correspond with this rule. No one 
 man can so completely represent another, 
 and so anticipate all his experiences, as to 
 be able beforehand to prepare a set of 
 prayers which shall cover all the circum- 
 stances and meet all the needs of the latter. 
 In using the prayer of another there would 
 seem to be more likelihood that the self 
 which must be the speaker should be 
 absent than when the speaker is using 
 his own words. 
 
 Forms, however, are not to be absolute- 
 ly condemned; they may often be employed 
 with advantage. Especially, the Scripture 
 phrases, which are so wonderfully adapted 
 to the conditions of the human soul, give 
 
PRIVATE PRAYER. lOI 
 
 US an invaluable aid in moulding into prayer 
 the desires of the heart. Only let it be 
 always borne in mind that another man's 
 prayer can become yours simply by throw- 
 ing yourself into it. The dialect of prayer 
 is the dialect of nature. Above all things 
 seek to be natural — that is, simple and 
 truthful — in your prayers ; and to this end 
 first define your desires to your own mind, 
 and then tell them to God in just the form 
 in which you have defined them to your 
 own mind. 
 
 II. 
 
 In your pi^aying pray to God. 
 
 When a man speaks, he must have a per- 
 son before him ; for speech is the commu- 
 nication of thought, and communication re- 
 quires a receiver as well as a giver. Prayer 
 to God implies that he is the Hearer of 
 what is spoken — not merely in the sense 
 in which he must hear everything as an 
 omniscient being, but in the sense of a be- 
 ing made consciously present and inten- 
 tionally addressed by the mind of the 
 speaker. It is quite possible that prayer, 
 so called, should not be made to God at 
 
I02 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 all — that is, it is quite possible that men 
 should professedly pray where God's pres- 
 ence is not discerned by their minds, and 
 where the words spoken are not directed 
 to him personally. They may bend the 
 knee and then occupy themselves with self- 
 communings, with a sort of pious soliloquy 
 or reverie, and fancy they are praying. 
 They are really here thinking aloud, as it 
 were — a process in which the mind is re- 
 acting upon itself instead of transacting 
 with God. So, in their addresses to God, 
 and while using his adorable names and 
 titles, they may only be addressing an ab- 
 stract and imaginary object. 
 
 It is a natural habit of the mind to per- 
 sonify its own conceptions. Orators and 
 poets avail themselves of it in order to 
 give vividness to what they are remem- 
 bering or what they are trying to realize. 
 When Cowper wrote those tender lines, 
 
 <' My mother ! when I learned that thou wast dead, 
 Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? 
 Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son ? 
 Wretched e'en then, life's journey just begun?" 
 
 he was simply indulging in affectionate 
 
PRIVATE PRAYER. IO3 
 
 reminiscences, speaking of a thing of the 
 past, not speaking to a thing of the pres- 
 ent. When Milton, in his "Paradise Lost," 
 utters the invocation, " Sing, heavenly 
 Muse !" he was not speaking to a person, 
 but attempting to rouse the energies of 
 his own soul by personifying them. 
 
 A similar illusion may be practised upon 
 ourselves in praying to God. Certain 
 thoughts about God may be thrown into 
 the form of an address to God, but thouohts 
 about God are not prayer to God. Prayer 
 must put us literally in the position of one 
 person speaking to another person. 
 
 Of course this cannot be, in our case, a 
 face-to-face communion with God, as it is 
 said to have been in the case of Moses, but 
 it is a spirit- to- spirit communion. And, as 
 there is no appeal to the senses here, it is 
 the mind itself which must make God a vis- 
 ible person ; through the medium of faith 
 it must see " Him who is invisible." Hence 
 the mind must be put in a position to see 
 him by deliberate forethought and by a 
 constant fixing of the eye of the soul upon 
 God during prayer. 
 
I04 FOLLOIVJXG CHRIST. 
 
 Every praying person is familiar with the 
 tendency of the mind to wander in prayer, 
 and every sincere worshiper deplores this 
 and feels it to be sin. The explanation of 
 this experience is that for the time the per- 
 son has ceased to see God and to speak to 
 God, and so has ceased to pray. 
 
 Let the Christian who is in earnest euard 
 against putting this similitude of prayer in 
 the place of the real thing. There is no 
 prayer which is not the converse of the 
 soul with God — no prayer where the 
 thought, the feeling, the desire, does not 
 consciously reach God ; and, seeing how 
 hard it is to lift the weak earthly spirit of 
 man to this high communion, there is am- 
 ple reason for a resort to that aid of the 
 Holy Spirit of which the apostle speaks 
 (Rom. viii. 26): "The Spirit also helpeth 
 our infirmities ; for we know not what we 
 should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit 
 itself maketh intercession for us with groan- 
 ings which cannot be uttered." 
 
PRIVATE PRAYER. IO5 
 
 III. 
 
 In praying, be carefid, while you pray, to 
 
 DO NO MORE THAN PRAY. 
 
 To pray is to beg, to take the attitude 
 of one soliciting a favor ; it is something, 
 therefore, quite different from demanding 
 or prescribing or enjoining. It properly 
 excludes the assertion of a right on the 
 part of the petitioner, for what is a man's 
 by right is his by debt. It is what the 
 party applied to is bound to pay. It is 
 not w^ith the tone of demand that man is to 
 address God ; prayer is an expression of 
 man's need, not of God's duty. The ground 
 upon which it is to be offered is God's will- 
 inorness to rcQ^ard man's need, not an obli- 
 gation requiring him to relieve it. 
 
 Now, it is not to be supposed that any 
 man would deliberately command the ser- 
 vices of God, and yet he may proximately 
 do this in various ways ; as when he for- 
 gets that God may properly say "No" to 
 his petition ; or when he presumes to dic- 
 tate the time and the manner in which his 
 prayer is to be answered ; or when he in- 
 
106 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 sists Upon being gratified in his desires at 
 the expense of God's will ; or when he has 
 no intention to use for God's glory the 
 favor asked ; or when he prays in such a 
 temper as shall make him feel wronged in 
 the event of God's appearing to withhold 
 the blessing sought. . 
 
 It is evident that the spirit in which 
 prayer is to be made is one of profound 
 humility. It is that of a beggar casting his 
 needs at the footstool of a benevolent, but 
 at the same time a wise and righteous, sov- 
 ereign. The truly Christian man will al- 
 ways pray under the subduing and restrain- 
 ing influence of this spirit : he will be the 
 suppliant, not the exactor ; and, with what- 
 ever earnestness and importunity he may 
 urge his requests, he will remember that 
 in regard to the disposal of the matters to 
 which they relate there are many things 
 which he must leave to the good-pleasure 
 of God. The Saviour's prayer in Gethsem- 
 ane should teach his followers to couple 
 the significant formula " If it be possible " 
 with their most ardent appeals to God. 
 
PRIVATE PRAYER. lO/ 
 
 IV. 
 
 Let your p7^ayers be accompanied with 
 CORRESPONDING ACTS. In otlie}" words, act 
 in accordance with your prayers. 
 
 You will do this, for instance, when you 
 patiently watch and wait for the results of 
 your prayers. You do not pray in the 
 spirit of the man who presents a check for 
 which he expects instantaneously to receive 
 the amount of money called for, nor in that 
 of the man who drops his bucket into a well 
 looking for it immediately to return filled 
 with water. You have simply stated your 
 wants and your troubles to God, and have 
 referred the solution of them to him. To 
 his judgment you have left the questions 
 as to whether it is expedient that your re- 
 quest should be granted at all, and whether, 
 if granted, the answer should come at the 
 time or in the form which you have pro- 
 posed. You have avowed your confi- 
 dence in him by thus appealing to God ; 
 you will avow it still further by subse- 
 quendy maintaining an attitude of expect- 
 ancv before him. 
 
108 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 This latter act of confidence seems ne- 
 cessary to prove the reality of the former. 
 Who, seeking admittance to a house, would 
 knock at the door and then go away for- 
 getting what he had done ? By waiting for 
 something to result from it he who truly 
 knocks in prayer will show that he meant 
 something by knocking. This outlooking 
 frame of mind, if cultivated, would undoubt- 
 edly have the double effect of deepening 
 the believer's sense of his dependence on 
 God and of revealing to him innumerable 
 instances in which his dependence is met 
 and relieved by the orderings of God's 
 providence. 
 
 Another of those acts which should con- 
 cur with prayer is the diligent using of all 
 practicable means for securing the blessing 
 sought. No reasonable man expects mir- 
 acles to be wrought in his behalf, and no 
 reasonable man would claim to be cred- 
 ited as sincere in asking God for a partic- 
 ular benefit, when he was unwilling to make 
 an effort on his own part to gain it. A 
 man's working must go along with his pray- 
 ing. God "giveth seed to the sower," not 
 
PRIVATE PRAYER. IO9 
 
 to the sluggard: "The husbandman that 
 laboreth must be first partaker of the 
 fruits" (2 Tim. ii. 6). A Christian's Hfe 
 ought to be the repetition of his prayers, 
 and no really religious man will expect a 
 blessing from God, either temporal or 
 spiritual, unless by corresponding acts he 
 is laborinor to secure the blessing-. The 
 result of such an accordance would prob- 
 ably be that his life would be better and 
 his prayers more frequently successful. 
 
 It may be added, as a further thought in 
 this connection, that the man who prays in 
 a right spirit will not limit his praying to 
 the mere asking of favors from God. The 
 same spirit that asks a favor under the 
 stress of a want or a dano-er will lead a 
 man to express gratitude for favors already 
 received, to feel and confess his sins which 
 make him unworthy of what he asks, and 
 to render adoring ascriptions of praise to 
 those glorious attributes and offices of God 
 by which he offers himself to his people as 
 their Refuge in all their times of trouble. 
 
no FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 Let your prayers be offered ahvays with 
 a distinct reference to Christ as your 
 7nediu7n of access to God, as the grou?id of 
 your hope of acceptance with him, and as the 
 High Priest tJirough whose hands your peti- 
 tions are presented to the FatJier. 
 
 While it is true that men are naturally 
 constrained to pray to God, it is equally 
 true that they are naturally repelled in their 
 approach to him by a sense of their ill- 
 desert. The prophet's question (Mic. vi. 
 6), "Wherewith shall I come before the 
 Lord, and bow myself before the high God?" 
 is one which every member of a sinful race 
 will feel obliged to ask. This " Where- 
 with" is supplied in the mediation of Christ. 
 Every earnest worshiper will thankfully 
 recognize the fitness of this provision of the 
 gospel to his wants. The name of Christ 
 has been left by him to his followers as a 
 passport to the throne of grace. It fur- 
 nishes them with both a warrant and an en- 
 couragement to pray. It associates them 
 with Christ in their praying, enables them 
 
PRIVATE PRAYER. Ill 
 
 to join hands, as it were, with him as their 
 Elder Brother in drawing near to God, and 
 so inspires them with that sense of sonship 
 or fihal trustfulness which Paul declares to 
 be the privilege of every believer : " Ye 
 have not received the spirit of bondage 
 again to fear, but ye have received the 
 spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, 
 Father" (Rom. viii. 15). 
 
 VL 
 
 Let the practical question, How is this 
 PRACTICE OF PRAYER TO BE KEPT UP ? be early 
 considered and anszuered. 
 
 As men are ordinarily situated, this ques- 
 tion will seem to present a discouraging 
 enigma. To many persons — perhaps to 
 the majority — the performance of the duty 
 it proposes will appear an utter impossi- 
 bility. How can the man or the woman 
 pursued each day, from morning to night, 
 by the exactions of business or by the cares 
 of the household find either time or capacity 
 for such intercourse with God as I have 
 been describing ? The difficulty is a real 
 one, and it is well for the professor of re- 
 
112 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 ligion to look at it and to dispose of it at 
 an early period. There is an advantage in 
 promptly dealing with it. With the view 
 of reducing it somewhat, the following siig- 
 oestions are offered. 
 
 First. Beware of admittino^ the idea that 
 the difficulties which lie in the way of prac- 
 ticing private prayer are an excuse for 
 abandoning it. It is by ''enduring hard- 
 ness" — that is, by encountering and over- 
 coming difficulties — that you are to show 
 yourself ''a good soldier of Jesus Christ." 
 Difficulties lie all along the path of the 
 Christian's life, and it is by his endeav- 
 ors to surmount them that he will give 
 the best evidence of the genuineness of 
 his faith and of the earnestness of his 
 purpose. 
 
 Secojtd. Put the necessity for prayer in 
 the same class with the necessity for your 
 daily food. A margin of time will always 
 be found for the reception of the latter ; 
 cannot a similar margin be found for the 
 practice of the former ? A brief season 
 only is required for prayer when the heart 
 is in it. Let this be borrowed from the 
 
PRIVATE PRAYER. 113 
 
 morning before the day's work begins, or 
 from the night before you retire to sleep. 
 
 Third. During the day, if no opportunity 
 for dehberate prayer can be found, try to 
 form the habit of mentally holding com- 
 munion with God. It is possible to keep 
 God so constantly in the view of the soul 
 that he may be consulted at any time by a 
 glance, just as the mariner makes his way 
 across the ocean by perpetually watching 
 the compass. Especially in any critical 
 juncture it is a wise custom and a helpful 
 resource to make these quick appeals to 
 God, and so to go into every conflict with 
 temptation consciously clad in a divine pan- 
 oply. Thus Nehemiah (Neh. ii. 4), when 
 serving King Ahasuerus as cupbearer, be- 
 fore he ventured to proffer his request to be 
 permitted to visit Jerusalem, secretly "pray- 
 ed to the God of heaven.'' 
 
 It is an unspeakable comfort to the truly 
 godly man that God can be addressed so 
 easily, without formal adjuncts, but it needs 
 to be added that the habit of so addressing 
 him can hardly be kept alive without some- 
 times resorting to the aid of the closet and 
 
114 FOLLOWING CUR 1ST. 
 
 the spoken word. It is not the bended knee 
 nor the devout phrase which makes the 
 prayer, but still, as natural expressions of 
 what the soul is doing in prayer, these are 
 such helps to the spirit of prayer that with- 
 out them the latter is apt to languish or to 
 expire altogether. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE CULTIVATION OF PERSONAL RELIGION. 
 
 THERE is a work to be done by the 
 Christian which is distinct from that 
 which belongs to him in his capacity as a 
 member of the church. It is that of culti- 
 vating religion in his own soul. 
 
 The obHgation to do this work naturally 
 lies upon all men. In joining the church a 
 man acknowledges this obligation, and at 
 the same time acknowledges his sin in hav- 
 ing previously neglected it and avows his 
 purpose in the future faithfully to discharge 
 it. It was in part to aid men in doing this 
 work that the Church was instituted, and 
 church-membership, and even zeal in com- 
 plying with church rules and rites, will avail 
 nothing where this is overlooked. Relig- 
 ious living cannot exist where there is not 
 religion in the heart. The living of any 
 man, no matter how it may be made to look, 
 
 115 
 
Il6 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 will really be what the man himself is. The 
 stream which attracts the observer's eye 
 must spring from a fountain concealed with- 
 in the hidden rock, and in its character will 
 partake of the quality of that fountain. A 
 religious life will be an impossibility unless 
 the springs of life within the soul are tinc- 
 tured and stirred by religious principles and 
 motives. 
 
 The follower of Christ must never forget 
 that in order practically to follow him he 
 must be subjectively or internally like him: 
 " If any man have not the spirit of Christ, 
 he is none of his" (Rom. viii. 9). The 
 Spirit of Christ is ah indwelling power de- 
 termining the attributes and the disposition 
 of the man himself. Its presence will be 
 attested by a process of growth or trans- 
 formation by which the man will be more 
 and more shaped into the form and devel- 
 oped into the stature of a perfect man in 
 Christ Jesus. It would be a fatal mistake 
 to imagine that one is born into the king- 
 dom of God full-grown, or that admission 
 to a church seals his salvation and ab- 
 solves him from all further concern about 
 
PERSONAL RELIGION. WJ 
 
 his spiritual condition. The assuming of 
 membership in the church is not the com- 
 pletion, but the beginning, of a work. Or, 
 rather, it is the continuing of a work which 
 had been begun before in the assuming of 
 a new relation to God by the believer 
 through his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 That prior relation must be maintained by 
 care, exercise and culture after he has en- 
 tered the church. All the outward badges 
 which may be put upon him will not make 
 him what he ought to be as a member of 
 the church — that is, a child of God. It was 
 as a man already religious that he took on 
 him the vows involved in a public profes- 
 sion of religion. As a religious man he is 
 possessed of a new nature, evincing itself 
 by peculiar affections toward God ; and the 
 vows involved in his public profession re- 
 quire him to keep this new nature in a 
 healthy and an active condition. He is to 
 cultivate it by attentions as direct as those 
 he bestows upon a plant he wishes to rear, 
 or as those by which he seeks to educate 
 his child into a becoming manhood. 
 
 The true children of God or members of 
 
I 1 8 FOL L O WING CHRIS T. 
 
 his Church have their type in "the tree 
 planted by the rivers of water, bringing 
 forth its fruit in its season" (Ps. i. 3) — 
 that is, in a hving and growing organism, 
 and not in the dead columns standing in 
 stately symmetry along the aisles of a ca- 
 thedral. It is life — the " life of God in the 
 soul" — which makes the Christian ; and the 
 first duty of the follower of Christ is to at- 
 tend to the cultivation of this life, or, what 
 is the same thing, to " working out his own 
 salvation with fear and tremblinor." 
 
 I. 
 
 In doing this it is evidently necessary that 
 he should give a prominent place to the idea 
 that he is standing always i^i direct contact 
 with God, so that all his religious move- 
 ments may be said consciously to terminate 
 upon him as their object. 
 
 God should be, in a supreme sense, the 
 One with whom he has to do, the One with 
 whom his soul is perpetually transacting. 
 His standard of character, his rules of duty, 
 the motives of his conduct, the quarter to 
 which his responsibilities point, and from 
 
PERSONAL RELIGION. II9 
 
 which conscience derives its judgments and 
 its verdicts, should distinctively be found in 
 God. It is only by maintaining this inti- 
 mate and constant association with God that 
 any man can be religious. It is just as im- 
 possible to imbue the soul with the spirit of 
 piety without keeping it exposed to the shin- 
 ing of God's face as it is impossible to 
 eive color to a flower without the aid of the 
 sun's ray. It is not enough to make a fel- 
 low-man — not even the best Christian you 
 know — your model. It is not enough to 
 make the terms of a decent standing in a 
 church the measure of your religiousness. 
 Whatever diverts the mind from God as the 
 Being whom we are striving specially to 
 please, and upon whose approbation we 
 depend as the ultimate source of our satis- 
 faction, is adapted to stifle rather than to 
 foster the religious spirit. The right-minded 
 child is the one who always keeps foremost 
 in his view the tribunal of his home, over 
 which the parent presides, and who feels 
 that he is true to his obligations only so 
 long as he puts that above the opinions of 
 his companions and the canons of society. 
 
I20 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 In the same way, God's children must recog- 
 nize the paramount authority of their home- 
 tribunal, and must seek their peace in the 
 commendation which their heavenly Father 
 breathes upon them in the solitude of his 
 presence-chamber. Such habitual dwelling 
 with God will be religious living, and a living 
 in an atmosphere where the principle of the 
 religious life will be sure to grow. 
 
 11. 
 
 That reasonable solicitude which any one 
 would feel in regard to an undertakin'g of 
 a worldly sort in which he was interested 
 ought to be exercised by the Christian in 
 regard to the spiritual prosperity of his soul. 
 
 His bodily health, we know, is an object 
 of concern to every man. It requires 
 thought, circumspection, prudence, over- 
 sight; and with persons who act reason- 
 ably it receives all these. It is anxiously 
 watched over from day to day, and any de- 
 viation from a sound condition is noted and 
 the remedy for it sought and applied. The 
 sincere Christian will inspect his religious 
 condition just as carefully and closely. He 
 
PERSONAL RELIGION. 121 
 
 has a character and a standing to maintain 
 in reference to God, just as he has in refer- 
 ence to the community among whom he 
 Hves ; and as he guards these with jealous 
 vigilance in respect to the latter relation, 
 so he will in respect to the former. He will 
 ''study to show himself approved unto God" 
 just as he studies to preserve a good repu- 
 tation in the sight of his neighbors. He 
 will never suffer himself to fall into indiffer- 
 ence or recklessness in regard to his relig- 
 ious state, nor indolently take it for grant- 
 ed that all is right within him. While he 
 sleeps thus the enemy may be sowing tares 
 amongst the wheat which he has pledged 
 himself to produce. 
 
 St. Paul's proposal to Barnabas (Acts xv. 
 36), " Let us go again and visit our brethren 
 in every city where we have preached the 
 word of the Lord, and see how they do' — or 
 fare, as the word means — indicates a work 
 which every Christian needs to perform for 
 himself He is to go again and again and 
 see how his soul is faring. Other interests 
 must not be allowed to interrupt his watch- 
 fulness over this superlative one. 
 
122 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 The sad lament of the Bride in the Song 
 of Solomon (i. 6), "They made me keeper 
 of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard 
 have I not kept," might be made by many 
 a follower of Christ who has been led to 
 neglect his spiritual estate in his absorbing 
 devotion to his secular concerns. The 
 world is a hard master and will urge its 
 claims with an unsparing rigor. Its exac- 
 tions must be resisted, or the Christian's 
 own "vineyard" will suffer damage. It is 
 true there is a possibility of an excessive 
 attention to the frames and workings of the 
 soul. Some men practice this introspection 
 or self-anatomy to such a degree that they 
 fall into a morbid state of mind and lose the 
 power of accurate discernment. The re- 
 sults in such cases are hurtful because of 
 the abuse of a mode of treatment which 
 when properly applied is right and whole- 
 some. But that some caring for, some 
 watching over, some keeping of, his own 
 vineyard or his own religious state, by the 
 Christian is a necessary condition of his 
 spiritual health and prosperity is undeni- 
 able. 
 
PERSONAL RELIGION. 1 23 
 
 III. 
 
 The positive methods by which piety may be 
 expected to be fostered i7i the heart ought to 
 be diligently made use of by the professor 
 of religion. 
 
 Every faculty, every aptitude, of man is 
 capable of culture and attains perfection 
 through culture. "In grace" men may 
 " grow," as in other things ; and growth 
 means progress, development, advancement 
 from stage to stage — a process which, in 
 the nature of it, may be helped or retarded 
 by favoring or opposing circumstances. 
 The Christian will grow in grace by faith- 
 fully using all legitimate means of grace. 
 For instance, 
 
 1. He will seek to enlarge his religious 
 knowledge, for in any department knowl- 
 edge is an aid to efficiency. To this end 
 he will avail himself of the instruction offer- 
 ed through the Scriptures, the pulpit and 
 the lecture-room, and the various forms of 
 religious literature. 
 
 2. He will seek to keep his religious 
 affections in lively exercise, and to this end 
 
124 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 will be much engaged in converse with God 
 as he appears to the eye of faith in his glo- 
 rious attributes, in his providential work- 
 ings, and especially in his gracious mani- 
 festations through Christ and the Holy 
 Spirit. He will be quick to mark the bear- 
 ings of these upon his own experiences, 
 and will try to hold his heart open to every 
 address they make to it. Above all things 
 he will prize the aid to be derived in this 
 respect from secret prayer, social devotion 
 and public worship. 
 
 3. He will seek to acquire an enlightened 
 and active conscience, and in order to this 
 will accustom himself to test his moral per- 
 ceptions and judgments by the word of God, 
 and to yield them assent and obedience on 
 the ground of God's authority rather than 
 because they seem to be right in his own 
 eyes. A man may safely follow conscience 
 when he consults it with a sincere desire to 
 hear God speaking in its utterances, and 
 when he requires it to verify its right to 
 speak by harmonizing its utterances with 
 the voice of God. 
 
 4. He will seek to preserve the purity 
 
PERSONAL RELIGION. 12$ 
 
 and the delicacy of his rehgious sensibilities, 
 and in order to this will keep his affections 
 fixed upon things which are really true and 
 good and guard them against the seductive 
 influence of those which are merely plausi- 
 ble and specious. He will "try the spirits" 
 before he gives his faith to them. The 
 chaste soul truly espoused to Christ will feel 
 that in ''calling evil good" in any form, or 
 in " loving or making a lie," it is guilty both 
 of treachery to its Lord and of defiling it- 
 self. 
 
 5. He will seek to abound in those char- 
 itable dispositions and works by which Jesus 
 was so distinguished, and to this end will 
 place himself in sympathy with the world 
 around him and endeavor to keep his life 
 mingling as a current of kindness with 
 the common life of his generation. 
 
 6. He will seek, in a word, to reproduce 
 in himself, so far as this is possible, the per- 
 fect mind and character of Christ, and to 
 this end will by steady self-denial purge 
 himself of his natural corruptions and faults, 
 and with a patience and minuteness of at- 
 tention like that of the sculptor will labor 
 
126 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 to shape himself into a Hkeness to his Lord. 
 It is thus by its onward motion that the re- 
 Hgious Hfe asserts its presence, as the clock 
 serves the purpose of a clock only when its 
 hands are traveling around the dial-plate. 
 Therefore, says the apostle (Heb. xii. i), 
 *' let us lay aside every weight and the sin 
 that doth so easily beset us, and let us run 
 with patience the race that is set before us, 
 looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher 
 of our faith." 
 
 IV. 
 
 The -counterpart of what has just been 
 said is that the Christian who wishes to 
 grow in religion will, as far as possible, dis- 
 e?itangle himself from all such associations 
 and surroundings as are unfavorable to 
 religion. 
 
 The Christian is the occupant of two 
 spheres so intermingled that he must neces- 
 sarily live in both. The one is the world, 
 the other is the kingdom of God. It is his 
 difficult duty to maintain the character of a 
 subject of the kingdom of God while he is 
 actually doing his part as a denizen of the 
 
PERSONAL RELIGION. 12/ 
 
 world. It was with these contradictory ele- 
 ments of their condition in his view that the 
 Saviour prayed for his disciples (John xvii. 
 15) : "I pray not that thou shouldest take 
 them out of the world, but that thou should- 
 est keep them from the evil." What the 
 Saviour here prays the Father to do the 
 honest professor of religion will himself 
 endeavor to do — that is, keep himself from 
 the evil to which he is exposed while in the 
 world. 
 
 That there is evil in the world admits of 
 no question. The policy of the world in its 
 best forms is a policy which originates with 
 the world and terminates upon the world. 
 Directly it knows nothing of a God before, 
 above or beyond the world. It never pro- 
 poses to make men religioiis. It has no 
 facilities to offer them in this direction. The 
 religious man pursuing his aim as such will 
 find himself in the position of a vessel beat- 
 ing its way by every device into port in the 
 face of an opposing tide and contrary winds. 
 The adverse power of the world does not 
 so much lie in its gross forms of opposition 
 to the kingdom of God as in that large class 
 
128 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 of occupations and enjoyments in which, it 
 is said, a religious man may engage without 
 ceasing to be religious. These occupations 
 and enjoyments constitute a kind of com- 
 mon territory in which the Christian and 
 the worldly man may meet. The policy of 
 the world extends over it, or the worldly 
 man would not be found there. Can the 
 Christian enter it without being imbued with 
 this policy? Can he consort there with 
 men of the world without becominor like 
 them, and so ceasing to be religious ? 
 
 Here is the difficulty of his position ; and 
 hence the need of the counsel : Beware 
 of these associations and surroundings, 
 through which the policy of an irreligious 
 world is operating, lest you be brought un- 
 der the dominion of this policy. The voice 
 that invites you into them is a siren voice. 
 The evil against which the Saviour prayed 
 lies lurking in them, and it becomes you to 
 enter them with a cautious foot and to move 
 among them with a vigilant eye. 
 
 No man, unless shielded and upheld by 
 the grace of God, is proof against the power 
 of these worldly associations and surround- 
 
PEA'SONAL RELIC 10 X. 1 29 
 
 ings. His nature disposes him to accom- 
 modate himself to the element in which he 
 is placed, and he cannot rely upon natural 
 power, therefore, to protect him against the 
 influence of that element. " Watch and pray 
 lest ye enter into temptation," said the Lord 
 to his disciples at a time when he foresaw 
 that their natural strength was to be tried 
 to the utmost by impending dangers. The 
 cases are without number in the history of 
 the people of God where men have started 
 in their Christian course with the purest 
 purposes and the warmest fervor, and after- 
 ward, by stepping too far into the stream 
 of worldly business or pleasure, or by stay- 
 incr in it too lone, have lost their steadfast- 
 ness and have been swept away into all the 
 excesses of a worldly life. 
 
 The Christian cannot go out of the world, 
 but he is required not to be conformed to 
 the world ; and he must therefore guard 
 himself against the transforming power of 
 the world by keeping himself in contact and 
 association with those patterns of life which 
 belong to the kingdom of God. He must 
 check the growing weight of the attractions 
 
I30 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 of a worldly life by loading the opposite 
 scale with a preponderating weight of spirit- 
 ual interests and enjoyments. In the world 
 he must appear as one abroad. In the fel- 
 lowship of Christian minds, and in those 
 scenes and occupations in which he may 
 meet and converse with his Lord, he must 
 find his home. O follower of Jesus, when 
 you feel your relish for the exchange, the 
 club-room or the haunts of social amuse- 
 ment exceeding and impairing your relish 
 for the prayer-meeting, the religious con- 
 ference or the society of your pious friends, 
 be admonished that the pulse of spiritual 
 life is declining, and that the danger of 
 which your Master forewarned you under 
 the name ''the evil which is in the world" 
 is becoming imminent in your case ! 
 
 V. 
 
 The cultivation of religion will hardly be 
 prosecuted unless a deep sense of eternal 
 things and an eternal ivorld is kept alive 
 in the heart. 
 
 The " powers of the world to come" need 
 to be set over against the powers of the 
 
PERSONAL RELIGION. I3I 
 
 world that now is. How constantly the dis- 
 ciples are stimulated to fidelity and watch- 
 fulness by references in the New Testament 
 to the coming of the Lord ! How earnestly 
 the Christian racer is exhorted to keep his 
 goal in view ! How the fainting believer 
 is rallied by the call to look away from the 
 things which are seen and temporal to those 
 which are not seen and eternal ! It is the 
 waiting for the Bridegroom that keeps the 
 servant ready. The love of a world in 
 which he naturally has so many interests, 
 and with which he is so intimately associ- 
 ated, needs to be tempered for the Christian 
 by cherishing aspirations after the higher 
 one to which, as a joint-heir with Christ, he 
 is destined ; and the ardor with which treas- 
 ure on earth is pursued must be moderated 
 by a spiritual thrift which seeks to lay up 
 treasure in heaven. 
 
 The traveler about to pass into a foreign 
 country naturally anticipates the prepara- 
 tion required for his residence there and 
 makes it beforehand. In the same way the 
 Christian pilgrim, will in all things aim to 
 make his use of the present world subordi- 
 
132 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 nate to his well-being in the next. It is the 
 man who habitually keeps his mind impress- 
 ed with the transitory nature of the condi- 
 tion in which he is now placed, and forecasts 
 the momentous state into which he is about 
 to be introduced, who will be most likely to 
 be found amidst all his worldly environ- 
 ments with his ear on the watch for the signal 
 of departure and with his preparation for 
 that event all complete. He will be most 
 likely to avoid that "minding of the flesh" 
 which is " enmity against God," and which 
 hinders all spiritual growth, and to culti- 
 vate that " holiness without which no man 
 can see the Lord " In the quaint words of 
 the saintly Rutherford, '' the instinct of na- 
 ture maketh a man love his mother-country 
 above all countries ; the instinct of renewed 
 nature and supernatural grace will lead you 
 to such and such works — as to love your 
 country above, to sigh to be clothed with 
 your house not made with hands, and to 
 call your borrowed prison here below a bor- 
 rowed prison, and to look upon it servant- 
 like and pilgrim-like ; and the pilgrim eye 
 and look is a disdainful-like, discontented 
 
PERSONAL RELIGION. 1 33 
 
 cast of his eye, his heart crying after his 
 eye, *Fy! fy! This is not Hke my country!'" 
 
 VI. 
 It ought perhaps to be added, for the en- 
 couragement of the faithful Christian, that 
 growth in religion does not necessarily make 
 itself known to the consciousness. It may be 
 going on where there is no sign which the 
 subject of it can detect. Insensibly the 
 child springs up into the man. Insensi- 
 bly the true disciple advances in spiritual 
 capacity and stature. He will never see 
 the time when he will not need to struesfle 
 after further advancement. The larger the 
 measure of his attainments, the higher will 
 rise his ideal. He may seem not to be 
 growing ; but if the Spirit of God be in him, 
 he is doing so. Despondency must not for 
 a moment be entertained by the honest 
 follower of Christ. Vigilance and exertion 
 must never be relaxed. Infirmities may cling 
 to him with an inveterate tenacity, besetting 
 sins may show their vitality after years of 
 repression, weakness or inadvertence may 
 betray him into falls just when he is per- 
 
134 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 suading himself he is most secure ; but if 
 from every failure and delinquency he rises 
 with a more determined purpose to follow 
 after Christ, that purpose is the sign of a 
 life which is perhaps even growing more 
 robust by overcoming the obstructions it 
 encounters. The very effort to subdue 
 corruption in one department of the soul 
 may be the means of imperceptibly gener- 
 ating or developing grace in other depart- 
 ments. The evidence of progress in religion 
 is to be found, not in the actual attainment 
 of perfection, but in the patient and perse- 
 vering effort to attain it. This is all the 
 evidence that St. Paul had. " Brethren," 
 he says (Phil. iii. 13), "I count not myself 
 to have apprehended, but this one thing I 
 do : forgetting those things which are be- 
 hind, and reaching forth unto those things 
 which are before, I press toward the mark 
 for the prize of the high calling of God in 
 Christ Jesus." And by the same evidence 
 every Christian can assure himself of the 
 same fact. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RELIGION nV THE CHURCH. 
 
 THE conduct of the church-member 
 must in some way be affected by his 
 union with the church. 
 
 This is to be expected ; because, tirst, 
 association or partnership always obhges a 
 man to consult the will of his associates or 
 partners; and, second, the church being an 
 oro-anlzation created for certain ends, each 
 member of it is charged with an obUgatlon 
 to pursue those ends. 
 
 The man who after he has united with 
 the church practically Ignores the relation, 
 and holds himself aloof from the corporate 
 life and action of the church, is repeating 
 the fallacy of the man who refuses to join 
 the church on the Q-round that he can be as 
 good a Christian out of the church as in it 
 In fact, he is adding inconsistency to unrea- 
 
 135 
 
13^ FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 sonableness and had better never have 
 entered the church at all. Such Inert mem- 
 bers are a dead-weight upon the church 
 rather than an accession to its force. 
 
 The followers of Christ constitute a house- 
 hold, and a household that has its distinct in- 
 terests and duties. "All ye are brethren," 
 said Christ (Matt, xxiii. 8), which means 
 that every professed disciple of the Lord is 
 bound to show himself a brother to his 
 fellow-disciples. St. Paul, speaking of 
 Christians, says (i Cor. xii. 20), "Now are 
 they many members, but one body." The 
 "one body" — the church — has a life of its 
 own which can be distinguished from the 
 life of the several members, and yet is con- 
 stituted by the united livc^s of the several 
 members. The human body is a type ot 
 the church, composed of a diversity of 
 members, so that each member is required 
 in its actine to regard the well-beino- of 
 the other members. The foot, for instance, 
 must be governed in the use it makes of 
 itself by a regard to the interests of the hand ; 
 and the eye, by a regard to the interests of 
 the ear. 
 
RELIGION IN THE CHURCH, 1 3/ 
 
 Besides, everv church-member ensfaofes 
 by a positive covenant to make the purposes 
 for which the church exists his own. As it is 
 the duty of every man who professes to be 
 a follower of Christ to attach himself to his 
 Church, so it is his duty — and a duty which 
 he solemnly acknowledges by his connection 
 with the church — to contribute his propor- 
 tion of that efficiency which is required in 
 order to enable the Church to execute the 
 ministry which has been assigned to it by 
 its divine Head. This ministry includes, 
 first, certain offices to be performed to the 
 body itself, and, second, certain offices to be 
 performed to the world at large. 
 
 I. 
 
 In carrying out this ministry, evidently, 
 every church-member should feel and ex- 
 press a hearty intej^est in the affairs of the 
 chtirch. 
 
 It is to be supposed that he had a definite 
 motive in attachinor himself to the Church 
 and in soliciting membership in the partic- 
 ular church which he has joined. That 
 motive should exhibit itself just as clearly 
 
138 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 in his subsequent conduct. What concerns 
 the church, it should be henceforth seen, is 
 a matter of personal concern to him. 
 
 It might seem supererogatory to give 
 such counsel as this, and yet facts show 
 that there is an occasion for it. Multitudes 
 enter the Christian Church apparently 
 without the least idea that they are thereby 
 charging themselves with a specific set of 
 corporate obligations. As in the matter of 
 embracing Christ they were acting entirely 
 in a private capacity, they are apt to carry 
 the same feelinor of isolation into the act of 
 entering into the visible community of be- 
 lievers — an act which they regard as merely 
 complementary to the other. Their solici- 
 tudes are therefore limited to themselves. 
 They overlook the fact that in identifying 
 themselves with this community they are 
 identifying themselves with a living organ- 
 ism that gets its life and efficiency from the 
 contributions of each constituent member. 
 
 Or if this fact is not entirely overlooked, 
 the church-member may come to feel that 
 he is fitted to occupy only a negative position 
 in the church by reason of his low estimate 
 
RELIGION IN THE CHURCH, 1 39 
 
 of his personal abilities or his obscure social 
 standing. The result is that such persons 
 remain to a great extent strangers in the 
 family into which they have been adopted. 
 They are rather lodgers in the house of 
 God than active members of the household. 
 They are like the passengers of a ship, who, 
 having been duly booked, feel that they 
 have nothing to do but to sit quietly and be 
 conveyed to their destination. They take 
 it for ^ranted that the seamen will attend 
 to the management of the ship. This is 
 to misread altogether the terms of their 
 enlistment. They are the seamen, not the 
 passengers ; parties charged with the cus- 
 tody and conduct of a cargo, not repre- 
 sentatives of that cargo. It was " not to be 
 ministered unto, but to minister," that the 
 Son of man came (Matt. xx. 28), and his 
 followers m.ust enter into his service and 
 kingdom in the same spirit. 
 
 The actual exhibition of this spirit will 
 depend upon the degree with which the 
 professor of religion associates himself in 
 interest and sympathy with the church to 
 which he has attached himself And, there- 
 
140 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 fore, he needs to be admonished to see that 
 his heart goes with his profession. *' No 
 man," said Jesus (Luke ix. 62), "having put 
 his hand to the plough, and looking back" 
 — or forgetting that his business is to drive 
 the plough forward — '' is fit for the kingdom 
 of God." And as another consideration in 
 favor of the duty I am enjoining it may be 
 suggested that it is probable those who 
 hold themselves aloof from church fellow- 
 ship and church work will become com- 
 plainers and unfriendly critics of what their 
 brethren are doing. The men who do not 
 plough are apt to occupy themselves with 
 uncharitable faultfinding with the efforts of 
 those who are attempting to plough, and so 
 put themselves in the unenviable position 
 of hinderers of the Lord's work. 
 
 II. 
 Every church-member is entrusted, to 
 some degree, with the mamtaiiiing of the 
 character which the Church is intended, in the 
 plan of its Founder, to illustrate. He is to 
 be the type, the living representative, of 
 that " holy nation," that " peculiar people," 
 
RELIGION IN THE CHURCH. I4I 
 
 which the followers of the Saviour are said 
 to constitute. 
 
 In executing this trust he has a duty to 
 perform first to his fellow-Christians. He 
 is to exert such an influence as his circum- 
 stances and abilities allow in favor of that 
 piety which is the characteristic of the spirit- 
 ual family to which he belongs. He is to 
 ofive liorht to others, as he in turn is to 
 receive light from them. He may hold only 
 a taper, and they a torch ; but the taper 
 can add to the light of the torch, or a taper 
 brightly blazing may even replenish the wan- 
 ing light of an expiring torch. No man is 
 without influence. By the power of ex- 
 ample, if in no other way, he may affect 
 others and contribute his share to the work 
 of edifying the Church of God. No truly 
 consistent, devout and godly church-member 
 lives unnoticed or fails to quicken duller 
 souls by the clear shining of his light. 
 
 Then, in the second place, there is an 
 influence to be exerted in impressing the 
 world with the divine specialty of the religion 
 of Christ. Every church-member may be, 
 and ought to be, an "epistle" of piety so 
 
142 FOLLOWING CILRIST. 
 
 legibly written that it may be " known and 
 read of all men," and written, I may add, in 
 such celestial characters that all men may 
 be convinced that it is the product of the 
 Holy Spirit. It is not the excellence of its 
 creed nor of its government nor of its modes 
 of worship which gives credit to a church in 
 the eyes of worldly men. It is the exactness 
 with which the members of a church fulfill 
 the rigid practical tests which worldly men 
 will be sure to apply to them. Inconsistent 
 and irregular professors of religion, it is 
 no exaggeration to say, are more effective 
 enemies to the cause of Christ than the 
 bitterest opponents to be found in the ranks 
 of infidelity. What the Church ought to 
 be as " the pillar and ground of the truth," 
 and as the body of Christ animated by his 
 Spirit, each particular Christian ought to 
 be in his measure and sphere. 
 
 III. 
 
 It follows from this that every church- 
 member ought to endeavor to qtcalify hwi- 
 selffor usefulness. 
 
 A talent which has never been exercised 
 
RELIGION IN THE CHURCH. 1 43 
 
 or called into practice places its possessor 
 in a position not differing much from that 
 of the man who, having received a talent, 
 deliberately goes and hides it in a napkin. 
 Two mites which a poor widow gave to the 
 Lord were acknowledged by him. Every 
 Christian probably has at his command a 
 source of influence equivalent to these two 
 mites. In fact, until the trial is honestly 
 made, no one knows what gifts have been 
 laid in his keeping. Poor as the distrustful 
 disciple may deem himself, spiritually or 
 intellectually, he can easily find some one 
 else who is poorer, whose deficiencies can 
 be supplied even out of his scanty resources. 
 The art of being useful, like all other arts, 
 is to be acquired by practice. No man 
 knows the ability there is in him till, like 
 the spark struck from the steel, it has been 
 brought out by the stroke of effort. In the 
 difierent departments of religious work laid 
 out for itself by any active church, such as 
 Sabbath- and mission-schools, prayer-meet- 
 ings, benevolent associations and evangeli- 
 cal visitation and labor, an opportunity is 
 offered for the use of every kind of talent; 
 
144 FOLLOWINC, CHRIST. 
 
 and every kind of talent Is usually welcomed 
 by those who superintend these depart- 
 ments. At all events, the home and the 
 family form a sphere in which the humblest 
 individual may do good. 
 
 Particularly I would suggest that the 
 prayer-meeting — which is eminently a social 
 institution where Christians seek to be 
 helpers of one another's faith and joy — lays 
 a special claim upon the male members of 
 a church. A meeting for prayer implies, 
 of course, that among the parties present 
 there are some who are able and willinof to 
 offer prayer. It is not said that all present 
 are under an obligation to do this, for it is 
 evident that the gifts which qualify a person 
 profitably to lead the minds of others in this 
 exercise are not indiscriminately granted to 
 all Christians. But it is just as evident that 
 if the prayer-meeting is to be sustained, an 
 obligation rests upon some — and upon a 
 sufficient number — of a congregation to see 
 that this duty is performed. The question, 
 therefore, ought to press itself upon the 
 mind of every conscientious church-member, 
 " Can I not in this way serve the church?" 
 
RELIGION IN THE CHURCH. 145 
 
 The reluctance which is naturally felt to the 
 performance of a public service like this is 
 not a sufficient reason for concluding that 
 the obligation does not exist, for many a 
 duty has to be performed at the cost of self- 
 denial. Where the voice of the church 
 distinctly calls for the rendering of such a 
 service at the hands of any of its members, 
 it is probably safe to conclude that it is their 
 duty to render it ; and it is equally safe to 
 expect that the grace which is promised to 
 all believers in every time of need will upon 
 trial successfully carry them through all the 
 difficulties which beset it. 
 
 The man who is accustomed to offer 
 prayer to God in secret and in audible 
 words, as it is — at least sometimes — well to 
 do, and who in addition conducts worship 
 in his family, as all Christian householders 
 oueht to do, will find that he has at hand 
 all the subjects and all the phrases which 
 are needed at the prayer-meeting. The 
 ambition which aims at making 2. fine prayer 
 is not only out of place on such an occasion, 
 but ought to be repressed as a positive 
 offence against God. The social prayer is 
 10 
 
146 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 generally most seasonable and effective 
 when it is simple and short. Considering 
 the benefit which may be communicated 
 to pious souls through the medium of a 
 prayer offered by another — a benefit which 
 every Christian has experienced — the ability 
 to pray for and with others is surely a tal- 
 ent which ought to be coveted. 
 
 The predicament in which a professedly 
 religious man finds himself when the request 
 is made to him by some suffering or dying 
 fellow-being, " Pray for me," and the reply 
 has to be given, " I cannot," is a sad one. It 
 is one which has often occurred. Surely it 
 is one which ought never to have occurred. 
 The follower of Christ ought to be as ready 
 to respond to the appeal "Pray for me" as 
 his Master was to give an answer to his 
 disciples' request, " Lord, teach us to pray." 
 
 IV. 
 
 The church-member should be a coadju- 
 tor with his brethren in every authorized 
 effort to s2ipport and propagate Christianity. 
 
 The church which can hear the Lord say, 
 *' Go ye into all the world and preach the 
 
RELTGTON IN THE CHURCH. 1 47 
 
 gospel to every creature" (Mark xvi. 15), 
 and yet refuse to engage in such efforts, is 
 like the son who to his father's command, 
 " Go work to-day in my vineyard," replied, 
 "I will not" (Matt. xxi. 28). It is belieing 
 its character as a church. 
 
 Now, a church is an organized body and 
 does its work in an orderly and regular 
 way. It is under a divinely-constituted 
 government. It is the duty of the gov- 
 erninor officers to see that the church is 
 prosecuting its appropriate benevolent and 
 evangelical labors, and it is to be presumed 
 that these officers, from their position and 
 from the directness of their responsibility, 
 will be best able to define the kind of labors 
 in which the body of Christ's followers ought 
 at any time to engage. The faithful church- 
 member will therefore accord to the govern- 
 ing powers of his church an authority to di- 
 rect him in this matter. He will accept the 
 system of operations devised by his church 
 for its members as a good one, and will feel 
 himself under obligation to yield it his sup- 
 port unless a clear conviction of his duty to 
 God constrains him to do otherwise. 
 
148 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 The position that church-authorities have 
 no right to prescribe to the private member 
 his duty in this respect, and that he may 
 lawfully withhold his support from any 
 church enterprise because he does not see 
 the expediency of it or because he does not 
 deem it as important as some other enter- 
 prise, is undoubtedly a wrong one. Church- 
 members who, for instance, oppose missions 
 among the heathen, as some do, on these 
 grounds, although the judgment of the 
 deliberative and governing authorities of 
 the church has unanimously pronounced the 
 work to be effected by such missions to be 
 one which Christian people cannot overlook 
 without expressing disloyalty to their Lord, 
 are failing to acknowledge as they ought to 
 do the authority of those who are appointed 
 to rule over and admonish them. A certain 
 amount of obedience to those who are 
 charged with the oversight of the house of 
 God is due from those who have come under 
 the household law. 
 
 Such schemes of benevolent and evan- 
 gelistic work as have been devised by the 
 church will be adopted by every well-dis- 
 
RELIGION IN THE CHURCH. 1 49 
 
 posed church-member as an object of per- 
 sonal interest and sustained to the best of 
 his abiUty. In fact, these schemes are meth- 
 ods devised for him and facihties furnished 
 to him by the church for the doing of his 
 own private work. They are not to be 
 looked upon as an imposition. They create 
 no new obligation, but are rather helps to 
 the Christian in discharging an obligation 
 already existing. A poor-fund in the church, 
 under the management of the deacons, only 
 gives him the opportunity, through what he 
 contributes to it, of more easily reaching 
 the poor, whom as a follower of Christ he 
 was already under an obligation to relieve. 
 The Board or the committee of Domestic 
 Missions to which he is occasionally asked 
 to make a contribution is only an interme- 
 diate agent proposing to aid him in doing 
 a part which is already incumbent on him 
 in the work of sending the gospel to the 
 destitute. 
 
 It follows from this that every church- 
 member ought to place giving to religious 
 objects alongside of praying or communing 
 at the Lord's table in his scheme of relig- 
 
I50 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 ious living. The church is required to 
 present to God the spectacle of a people 
 *' zealous of good works " just as distinctly 
 as it is required to present to him that of a 
 people zealous for devotional rites or sacra- 
 mental solemnities. All the elements which 
 belong to the principle of piety — such as 
 faith, love, gratitude, zeal for God's honor, 
 and so on — are brought into exercise in the 
 act of religious giving as truly as in acts of 
 worship. For this reason this act is prop- 
 erly admitted among the forms of worship 
 practiced in the public devotions of the Sab- 
 bath, and every worshiper should feel the 
 same obligation to join in it that he feels to 
 take part in the prayers and the psalms. 
 
 It is noticeable with what explicitness the 
 Scriptures give directions as to the per- 
 formance of this act of worship. Thus, they 
 teach, first, that it is to be performed with 
 a willing mind : " God loveth a cheerful 
 giver " (2 Cor. ix. 7) ; second, that it is to be 
 performed with a pure desire to honor God 
 and without any stinting as to measure : " He 
 that giveth let him do it with simplicity " 
 (Rom. xii. 8) ; third, that the offering is to 
 
RELIGION IN THE CHURCH. IS I 
 
 bear a proportion to each individual's abil- 
 ity : " Let every one of you lay by him in 
 store as God hath prospered him " (i Cor. 
 xvi. 2) ; and fourth, that it should be per- 
 formed as a continuous and systematic ex- 
 ercise, and be provided for in advance of 
 special occasions by every man's setting 
 apart "on the first day of the week " or at 
 regular times a portion of his means for 
 religious uses. Such giving, if universally 
 practiced, would furnish the church with 
 the ability to carry forward all its enter- 
 prises, and would return a hundred-fold 
 blessing to the souls of those concerned 
 in it. 
 
 V. 
 
 It is clear from this statement of his du- 
 ties that the church-member needs to keep 
 himself informed in regard to much that be- 
 longs to the economic life of the church. 
 
 The ignorance which prevails amongst 
 the professed followers of the Lord in 
 reference to many things which are funda- 
 mental to their right religious living is de- 
 plorable. It may not be possible for every 
 member of a church to know everything 
 
152 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 which it would be profitable for him to 
 know, but it certainly is desirable that 
 every one should possess himself of all 
 the knowledge which is requisite to give 
 consistency and symmetry to his Christian 
 walk. He should know enough of the 
 constitution of his church to be satisfied 
 that it rests upon a good scriptural and his- 
 torical warrant, and on this account mainly 
 should conscientiously adhere to it. He 
 should know enough of its system of doc- 
 trine, and of the correspondence of this 
 with the word of God, to be enabled intel- 
 ligently to accept it. He should know 
 enough of its organic structure to under- 
 stand the names and the functions of its 
 various officers and courts and to follow it 
 in the working of its different departments. 
 He should take an interest in the proceed- 
 ings of church-councils. He should ac- 
 quaint himself with the outlying field in 
 which the church is called to work, and 
 with the nature and progress of the work 
 which the church is actually doing in that 
 field. He should know what every church 
 agency he is asked to support means, why 
 
RELIGION IN THE CHURCH. I 53 
 
 it has been called into existence and why 
 it claims his support. 
 
 To acquire this knowledge, even in a 
 moderate degree, will of course demand 
 some effort in the way of reading and re- 
 search. Especially it will require the aid 
 of the religious periodical. The history of 
 the Church from year to year — almost from 
 week to week — is stamped now upon the 
 pages of the religious newspaper and mag- 
 azine and spread before the eyes of the 
 world. It is so important a record that no 
 honest Christian can consent to be io^norant 
 of it ; it is so accessible that there is hardly 
 any one who cannot afford to possess him- 
 self of it. Every church-member should be 
 the reader of a Church paper, and perhaps 
 it is not too much to say that every church 
 should make provision for supplying with 
 such a paper every member who is too 
 poor to subscribe for one. 
 
 VI. 
 It may now be added that, apart from his 
 duty as a pious man to worship God, it is 
 incumbent on the member of a church, as a 
 
154 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 part of the duty which he owes to his fel- 
 low-Christians and the community around 
 him, to be puncttial and regular in his at- 
 tendance up07i public worship. 
 
 " Not forsaking the assembling of our- 
 selves together" is associated (Heb. x. 25) 
 with the duty of ''considering one another 
 and provoking unto love and good works." 
 The bond of sympathy is weakened, the 
 community of interest is abated, in any 
 congregation, by the withdrawal of the 
 countenance and support of any of its 
 members. Each heart is kindled into a 
 warmer glow by the presence and the co- 
 operation of another heart that beats in 
 unison with itself, and the lack of heartiness 
 which is manifested by the professed friends 
 of religion when they fail to appreciate and 
 join in the assemblies of their brethren 
 operates just as decidedly in chilling the 
 heartiness of those who are thus aban- 
 doned. Minister and people alike feel ag- 
 grieved by such an exhibition of disaf- 
 fection. 
 
 When the professed friends of religion 
 can so lightly esteem its ordinances, what 
 
RELIGION IN THE CHURCH. 1 55 
 
 must be the effect upon the minds of those 
 who are naturally inclined to deny their 
 authority ? When such discrediting of the 
 institutions of Christianity is witnessed 
 among its avowed adherents, what can be 
 expected but an emboldened opposition to 
 them on the part of the worldly-minded, 
 and a general rush of the community into 
 Sabbath desecration and every other form 
 of popular irreligion ? 
 
 The altars of God are the bulwarks of 
 virtue and morality as well as of piety, and 
 it is the saddest of all sights to see the 
 hands of the followers of Jesus concerned 
 in laying them waste. Surely the woe de- 
 nounced by the Saviour upon the man by 
 whom an offence cometh will hano- over the 
 head of the disciple who so discourages the 
 hearts of his fellow-believers, and so lends 
 his endorsement to the profane multitude 
 who say of Zion, " Rase it, rase it, even to 
 the foundation thereof!" 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. 
 
 IMPORTANT as is religion in the 
 Church, it is, if possible, more import- 
 ant outside of the Church. 
 
 It is probable that piety in the soul of a 
 Christian is cultivated and developed as 
 much by the hard exercise he has to under- 
 go in the world as it is by the observance of 
 the ordinances of the Church, just as the 
 musician is made by painstaking practice as 
 much as by the study of theoretical principles. 
 And when we take into view the further 
 duty of the Christian to impress the minds 
 of worldly persons with the reality and the 
 excellency of religion as a governing princi- 
 ple in a man's life, the power must be drawn 
 almost entirely from the evidences which are 
 to be found in his practical deportment. 
 
 Worldly men will naturally discredit the 
 claim of any man to be a true Christian 
 
 156 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. 15/ 
 
 who does not show his religion on the 
 plane of his worldly life. And the Chris- 
 tian should take no exception to this test. 
 For religion, being a property of the soul 
 or an abiding element in the man himself, 
 must be expected to evince its presence 
 wherever the man appears and in every- 
 thing that he does. In the nature of it, it 
 is a permanent, not an intermittent, force. 
 It will demonstrate itself like the steady 
 shining of the diamond, not like the tran- 
 sient sparkle of the dewdrop. It must ex- 
 hibit its power in all the circumstances, and 
 over all the circumstances, of a man's life, 
 in order to show that it is in itself some- 
 thing more than a mere circumstance. It 
 must reveal itself in the gait of a man's 
 daily walk, and not be assumed on set oc- 
 casions, like the soldier's measured step on 
 parade. 
 
 Further, it is to be considered that by far 
 the greater part of every man's time is ne- 
 cessarily employed in secular occupations. 
 It would be a singular incongruity if a su- 
 preme interest like religion were to find a 
 place in which to assert its claims or to en- 
 
158 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 force its authority only in the minimum of 
 a man's Hfe. That which is enjoined upon 
 men as their first and highest duty cannot 
 certainly be thrust away into a fraction of 
 the week, so as to be excluded from the 
 work of six days and confined to the formal 
 exercises of the Sabbath. And, what is of 
 more importance still, it is on the field of 
 the world that religion is put to its severest 
 trials and is required to give the best proof 
 of its celestial origin and temper. Till it 
 has shown itself competent to maintain its 
 ground on this field it cannot demand the 
 confidence of worldly men. It cannot be 
 stronger than its weakest part. It must 
 betray no weak part on that side which is 
 especially exposed to the scrutiny of world- 
 ly men. If it does, the whole fabric of its 
 pretensions falls. Therefore, said the Sa- 
 viour (Matt. V. 16), "let your light so shine 
 before men that they may see your good 
 works and glorify your Father which is in 
 heaven." 
 
 The divine lustre of religion must be 
 made to shine "before men" by being ex- 
 hibited where men resort or in the public 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. I 59 
 
 thoroughfares and market-places. It must 
 indicate its presence and power by produ- 
 cing- ''good works" or w^orks which glorify 
 God on a soil where such works are not 
 naturally found, or it will fail to fulfill the 
 function which the Author of it has assio^n- 
 ed to it. " The true lio-ht which lio;hteth 
 every man that cometh into the world " is 
 actually to accomplish that wdiich in its 
 nature it is adapted to do through the shin- 
 ing of the followers of Christ. The dark- 
 ness of the world is to be dispelled not 
 merely by the teaching of the preacher or 
 by the argument of the polemic, but by the 
 practical demonstration of the sanctifying 
 power of religion afforded by the living 
 luminary — the upright and consistent Chris- 
 tian. 
 
 What a distinguished Scotch divine has 
 said in closing a paper upon modern agnos- 
 ticism is true of all the forms of unbelief 
 current in the world: "The strongest of 
 all anti-agnostic forces — in fact, the one 
 great safeguard of humanity against the 
 general or final triumph of agnosticism — 
 is none other than the redemptive power 
 
l60 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. 
 Each one of you — fathers, brothers, sisters 
 — by simply so living as to show that re- 
 ligion is supremely worth believing, may 
 do far more to combat the spirit whence 
 agnosticism arises than I or any one could 
 do by a merely formal written attack upon 
 it. The grand argument against anti-re- 
 ligious agnosticism is the practical one of 
 a consistent and vigorous Christian life — 
 the argument which, through God's grace, 
 w^e can all use." 
 
 I. 
 
 In carrying his religion into secular life, 
 the Christian is to be careful that it gets, 
 through his representation of it, a fair show- 
 i7ig before the eye of the world. 
 
 This Christ asks of his followers, and it is 
 all that he asks. He does not expect them 
 to improve upon his doctrines orregulations, 
 but he does expect them to give to these a 
 just setting forth in their character and 
 their conduct. The style of manhood which 
 is depicted by our Lord and his apostles in 
 their teachings is unquestionably amiable 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. l6l 
 
 and beautiful. In assuming it human na- 
 ture is embellished with every genuine vir- 
 tue which can attach to it. When the 
 counsel is given, therefore, in Tit. ii. lo, 
 that believers should " adorn the doctrine 
 of God their Saviour in all things," the 
 meaning is, not that they should by any 
 devices of their own strive to make this 
 doctrine attractive, but that they should 
 allow it, through them as its medium, to 
 make a clear and full exhibition of the 
 attractiveness which intrinsically belongs 
 to it. 
 
 God's image in the soul is certainly a 
 perfect thing. The study of the Christian 
 must be to express that image faultlessly, 
 and to keep it from being obscured or 
 marred by infirmities of his own. What- 
 ever deforms character, as coarseness of 
 manner, untidiness of habit, vulgarity in 
 speech, irritability of temper or ill-breed- 
 ing in any form, is at variance with the 
 spirit of the gospel, and can never appear 
 in a professor of religion without in some 
 degree doing damage to the credit of re- 
 ligion. The morbid distempers and the 
 
1 62 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 offensive obliquities to which a man may 
 be naturally disposed or to which he has 
 become addicted are in the case of the 
 Christian more than blemishes in the man: 
 they are so many blots on the good name 
 of Christianity, and will be noted by the 
 enemies of religion as so many evidences 
 of its being a pretension rather than a 
 divine power in the soul. The censorious 
 eyes of the world are at all times upon the 
 follower of Christ, and a merciless rigor of 
 judgment will be applied by it to his most 
 trivial acts. It becomes him, therefore, to 
 remember the ordeal to which he is ex- 
 posed and in every phase of his life and. 
 conduct, jealously to maintain " a good re- 
 port with them which are without." 
 
 If religion does not improve the nature 
 of a man, it will have to bear, at the bar of 
 public opinion, the reproach of all the faults 
 which adhere to it. The crooked limb may 
 have been in the vine originally ; but if 
 religion does not prune it off, religion will 
 be charged with its existence. Hence the 
 Scriptures descend to such minuteness in 
 portraying the Christian life as to denounce 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. 1 63 
 
 such characters as the "busybody" and the 
 '* brawler," and to forbid such things as 
 " filthlness," " foolish talking" and "jesting" 
 as things "which are not convenient" — that 
 is, not suitable to the Christian. " Be piti- 
 ful," "Be gentle," " Be courteous," are coun- 
 sels which they continually reiterate. Relig- 
 ion is a refiner's fire in reference to the 
 outward man as well as to the Inward. St. 
 Paul has brought honor to Christianity by 
 his delicate sensibility and his gentlemanly 
 bearing, as well as by the breadth and power 
 of his expositions of truth. The separate- 
 ness from the world which the gospel en- 
 joins does not mean the abandonment of 
 the decencies of life nor the amenities of 
 society, and no follower of Christ can dis- 
 reoard them in his intercourse with his fel- 
 low-men without Injuring the religion which 
 he represents in the same way and to the 
 same extent as "dead flies" are said (Eccl. 
 X. i) to corrupt "the ointment of the apoth- 
 ecary." 
 
 II. 
 To this suoforestion it ouo^ht to be added 
 that religion is not to be recominended to the 
 
164 FOLLOWING CILRIST. 
 
 woidd by any ostentatious modes of demonstra- 
 tion. 
 
 The man who is seeking to advertise 
 himself or get credit to himself as a pro- 
 fessor of religion, is sacrificinor the honor of 
 religion in order to honor himself. Unsea- 
 sonably introduced or offensively obtruded, 
 religion fails to command the respect which 
 the follower of Christ should always aim to 
 draw to it. Sincerity, consistency and good 
 sense are what the shrewd men of the world 
 expect to find in a Christian, and what they 
 have a right to expect. These forbid the 
 use of any factitious methods or any appear- 
 ance of study or any resort to the arts of 
 display in the practice of religion. Any 
 peculiarity which gives a man the air of one 
 playing a part will awaken a suspicion as 
 to his integrity, and in the case of religion 
 will give occasion to its adversaries to brand 
 the system itself as an imposture. It is by 
 depicting so-called religious characters un- 
 der this form — as thrusting their piety for- 
 ward in grotesque and unseemly ways, or 
 as hanging out the badges of their religion 
 in circumstances in which these have no 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. 1 65 
 
 place, or as indulging in unreal cant — that 
 some of the writers of popular literature 
 have sought to bring religion generally 
 into discredit and contempt. 
 
 The truly religious man will act relig- 
 iously, if I may so express it, without think- 
 ing of what he is doing, or at least without 
 giving the public any advertisement of the 
 fact. He will be simply himself; which is 
 to be the religious man. Except on special 
 occasions, it will be by indirect rather than 
 by direct methods that he will affirm his 
 religion. In performing an act of faith he 
 will not sound a trumpet before him, as the 
 hypocrites do. He will do it because his 
 thought is on God, who seeth in secret, not 
 on himself or his fellow-man. He will strive 
 to please all men so far as he can do this 
 consistently with fidelity to God ; and when 
 he has to offend any, he will do it in such a 
 way as obliges them to see that he cannot 
 please them without offending God. 
 
 III. 
 Men of the world will always put facts 
 before theories or professions. The Chris- 
 
1 66 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 tian must offer facts in verification of his claim 
 to be a religious man. 
 
 On the stage of secular life these must be 
 facts of a secular sort. In regard to the 
 great majority of men, their secular occu- 
 pations are made up of the handling and 
 making of money, and in their case the use 
 of money becomes the index of character. 
 The desire for money, as every one knows, 
 is apt to become an inordinate passion, 
 blighting the more generous affections of 
 the sou^ and converting the man into the 
 mere cold lover of self. Every one knows, 
 too, that the mere accumulation of money 
 is in itself a childish, not to say ignoble, end 
 for a rational being to set before him. The 
 love of money in its grossest form makes 
 the miser, and the miser is universally re- 
 garded as a despicable character. The 
 spirit of the miser is in every man who 
 makes money-getting, without regard to 
 the use of it, the supreme object of his 
 life and the supreme source of his enjoy- 
 ment. That spirit even the world brands 
 as disloyalty to the better instincts of hu- 
 man nature. How much more flagrantly 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. 1 6/ 
 
 must it appear in the case of the Christian 
 to be disloyal to God ! 
 
 The professor of religion is bound, there- 
 fore, to throw into his pursuit of wealth a 
 moderation of temper which the policy of 
 the world does not require. Though stand- 
 ing side by side with the mere money-get- 
 ter in this pursuit, he must show that he is 
 animated by a different motive, and that his 
 love to God is a stronger principle than his 
 desire for money. His position as a party 
 to this pursuit is not wrong. Ocqupation 
 is one of the conditions of man's well-being, 
 and occupation aims at results which are 
 conveniently represented by money. It is 
 right for the religious man to seek wealth, 
 but not simply for wealth's sake. In its 
 proper place it is a means for satisfying his 
 needs, gratifying his wholesome tastes and 
 enlarging his capacity for serving God by 
 serving his generation. It would seem to 
 be a reasonable proposition that a man's 
 desire for money ought to be regulated 
 and limited by his desire for that which 
 money enables him to do, and that when 
 this latter desire has been fully provided 
 
1 68 FOLLOWING CHRIST, 
 
 for the former one ought to cease to 
 operate. 
 
 Would it not be a stronof illustration of 
 the power of religious principle if the Chris- 
 tian were some time to be seen stopping in 
 his pursuit of wealth and saying, " I have 
 enough," and devoting the residue of his 
 life, as a sort of Sabbath-resting after his 
 toils, to such occupations as directly minis- 
 ter to the cause of benevolence and relig- 
 ion ? The Church needs just such men of 
 opulence and leisure to fill its offices, and 
 the world wants them to carry on its 
 schemes of reform and charity. 
 
 Or if an escape from the habits and the 
 implications of business be an impossibility, 
 what is to hinder the reliorious man to whom 
 God has oiven enouo^h for all his own wants 
 from making God, if I may so express it, a 
 partner in his future operations and pros- 
 ecuting his business and o-atherino- in his 
 o-ains in the interest of God and for the 
 furtherance of his kino-dom ? Instances 
 have occurred where men have so made 
 themselves literally the stewards of God, 
 illustriously showing that riches, which the 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. 1 69 
 
 Saviour declared to be so generally a fatal 
 bar in the path to heaven, may be converted 
 into the golden stairway which leads the 
 possessor directly into it. 
 
 If cupidity of disposition is to be avoided 
 by the Christian, I may now remark more 
 emphatically, i\n dishonesty in practice is 
 to be avoided by him. The world never 
 forgives an act of fraud, and, we may say, 
 n^Y^v forgets it; A pecuniary loss inflicted 
 on one man by another is a wrong which 
 rankles longest in the memory of the in- 
 jured party and is the hardest to be con- 
 doned by the offender. On this account 
 the professor of religion should look upon 
 the contractinor of a debt as an act which 
 
 o 
 
 brings him into fearful proximity to the 
 region of possible dishonesty. The im- 
 periling of the rights of others by any 
 presumptuous adventure in business, or a 
 resort to equivocal measures to escape a 
 just obligation to others, or a complicity 
 in any of the other thousand forms of 
 loose practice or sharp practice which are 
 current in the world, should be repelled 
 from his thought by the follower of Christ 
 
I/O FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 as promptly as his Master repelled the 
 suggestion of the devil that he should cast 
 himself from the pinnacle of the temple in 
 the expectation that the angels would pro- 
 tect him from harm. 
 
 The religion of Christ has no more effect- 
 ive enemy than is to be found in the per- 
 son of the professor who has suffered his 
 name to become blackened with an impu- 
 tation of dishonesty. The Church is every- 
 where bleeding from the wounds inflicted 
 by its false or heedless members w4io have 
 been betrayed into wrong-doing by their 
 intemperate lust for gain. 
 
 IV. 
 Afflictions, troubles and disappointments 
 fill so large a part of the ordinary life of 
 men that they constitute a common ground 
 upon which the Christian and the man of 
 the world may meet and compare their 
 principles. It is to be expected that relig- 
 ion will show its power by affording to the 
 possessor of it some advantage which the 
 irreligious man does not possess under 
 the pressure of these painful experiences. 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. I/I 
 
 Apart from religion there are no resources 
 accessible to men in their times of adver- 
 sity but such as are found in fortitude or 
 the passive acceptance of the inevitable, in 
 the diversion of mind afforded by occupation, 
 in the promises of hope or in the soothing 
 influences of time. These are as open to 
 the Christian as they are to others, but in 
 his case faith supplies additional and im- 
 measurably superior solaces and sup- 
 ports. 
 
 It does not promise himi exemption from 
 the tribulations which are common to all 
 men, but it does profess to give him a mas- 
 tery over the tribulations of the world to 
 which men naturally cannot attain. Men 
 of the world have, therefore, a right to 
 watch the deportment of the Christian 
 under the discipline of sorrow, and to de- 
 mand from him in the trying exigences of life 
 the evidence of a power in his principles to 
 sustain him of which they, in their lack of 
 faith, are destitute. 
 
 Much may be done for the honor of 
 Christ by his followers in such testing- 
 times by maintaining a temper and a de- 
 
1/2 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 meanor in harmony with the doctrines and 
 the promises of the gospel. The pain which 
 accompanies misfortune in any form, the 
 anguish of a bereaved heart or the stun- 
 ning effect of a commercial catastrophe are 
 experiences which irreligious men under- 
 stand as well as religious ones, and any ad- 
 vantage possessed by the latter in these cir- 
 cumstances is something which the former 
 are capable of appreciating. It is a good 
 time, therefore, to glorify God before an 
 unbelieving world when the believer is '' in 
 the fires." It is his privilege as well as his 
 duty so to conduct himself under the re- 
 verses of life that his neighbors shall see 
 that a divine Comforter is with him in the 
 furnace. 
 
 The annals of the Church, from the times 
 of the apostles down, are full of testimonials 
 to the power of religion to brace the soul 
 with couraore in the face of dangers before 
 which nature quails, and to make it patient 
 under sufferings against which nature re- 
 volts ; but each generation and each com- 
 munity calls for daily living attestations of 
 this power to meet the daily living skepti- 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. 1 73 
 
 cism of the world. Each follower of Christ, 
 in passing through his own " valley of weep- 
 ing," should be ready to give such testi- 
 mony to the abiding faithfulness and the 
 sufficient erace of his Lord. To be able 
 to give it when the demand for it arises 
 which may come suddenly, it is necessary 
 the Christian should habitually live in near 
 fellowship with God. It is when the eye 
 has been familiar with Christ by day that 
 the hand can find him in the darkness of 
 the niorht. It is the heart that has carried 
 in it the essence of faith and love in its 
 sound state that will, when broken by 
 adversity, 
 
 " like the plants that throw 
 Their fragrance from the wounded part, 
 Breathe sweetness out of woe." 
 
 V. 
 
 It is equally incumbent on the Christian 
 to prove to the world that in virtue of his 
 religion he is superior to the deterioratmg- 
 influences of prospe7'ity. 
 
 These influences are perhaps even more 
 dangerous to a Christian's steadfastness 
 than are those of adversity. To be in 
 
174 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 possession of that which worldly men wor- 
 ship with an idolatrous love, and yet to 
 keep himself free from this idolatrous love, 
 is the hard task set before the wealthy fol- 
 lower of Christ. It is the exhibition of a 
 radical distinction between him and worldly 
 men which the latter are bound to notice. 
 It is like the proof of his religious principle 
 which Daniel gave when he turned away 
 from the provision of the king's meat and 
 wine which was offered him and chose to 
 subsist upon pulse and water. To keep 
 this proof always clearly revealed to the 
 eyes of his fellow-men in his daily inter- 
 course with them is the duty of the religious 
 man, and it is a duty which should remind 
 him that if he needs divine grace to keep 
 him from fault in the acquisition of wealth 
 he needs it just as much to enable him to 
 maintain his integrity in the use of it. 
 
 There are two obvious ways in which 
 prosperity may lead the Christian into a 
 departure from his principles. The first 
 grows out of the fact that wealth gives im- 
 portance to the possessor of it. The nat- 
 ural result of this fact is that he should be- 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. 1 75 
 
 come inflated with a sense of his importance. 
 The second follows upon the other fact — 
 that wealth presents to the possessor of it 
 the means of indefinite indulgence. The 
 natural effect of this fact is to excite love of 
 indulgence. A sense of one's importance 
 is, of course, a magnifying of self; and as 
 self engrosses the contemplation of the 
 mind other objects recede, until all affinity 
 with them is lost sight of and the man with- 
 draws into a condition of cold isolation. 
 
 Let the prosperous Christian guard 
 against this natural propensity. Let him 
 show that wealth has not blunted or con- 
 tracted his sympathy with his kind, and 
 that his heart has not become encased in 
 the gold which his hands have gathered. 
 The follower of Christ must exhibit before 
 the world the grand spectacle of a man 
 who, while he is lifted by his riches above 
 participation in the wants of the multitudes 
 below him, still cherishes with special care 
 the Christian charities which make these 
 wants an object of personal interest. The 
 other danger — that of an excessive devo- 
 tion to the indulgences which wealth places 
 
176 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 within the reach of its possessor — is one 
 which the Christian needs perhaps stih 
 more carefully to avoid. 
 
 This duty leads us to a consideration of 
 the difficult and delicate question, How far 
 may the professor of religion indulge, with- 
 out detriment to his own spiritual well-be- 
 ing and the honor of religion, in what are 
 designated by the comprehensive term 
 '' worldly amusements " ? This question is 
 one which, in a pleasure-loving age like 
 the present, is sure to force itself upon the 
 attention of every one embarking in a re- 
 ligious life. It seems entirely reasonable 
 to say that in order that a Christian may 
 lawfully indulge in these amusements it is 
 necessary that he should be well assured 
 that in doing so he is not breaking down 
 that line of separation which he is required 
 always to make manifest between himself 
 and the mere man of the world. In deter- 
 mining this point it may aid him to reflect 
 upon the following facts. 
 
 First. That the very prevalent argument 
 that because religion was designed to make 
 people cheerful and happy, and because 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIEE. 1 77 
 
 worldly amusements are expressly em- 
 ployed to produce this effect, therefore 
 religious people may properly indulge in 
 these amusements, is a fallacy. It forgets 
 that the Christian religion defines cheerful- 
 ness and happiness at the same time that 
 it sanctions them. It does not resign its 
 authority when it approaches the realms of 
 pleasure. Here, as in all other departments 
 of conduct, it has some limits to fix and 
 some distinctions to draw. Its law pre- 
 scribes the ways in which men are to be 
 cheerful and happy, as well as all their 
 other ways of acting. When it invites 
 them to rejoice, it surely does not send 
 them to an ungodly world to learn how 
 they are to rejoice. The follower of 
 Christ is bound to follow him — that is, to 
 follow his direction — as much in his amuse- 
 ments as in anything else. Christ has never 
 given authority to society to direct his fol- 
 lowers. By a certain portion of society the 
 bacchanalian revel and the excitement of 
 the gaming-table are regarded as sources 
 of cheerfulness and happiness. Is it to be 
 supposed that Christ would bid his follow- 
 
 12 
 
178 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 ers take part in these amusements ? Who 
 will say so ? 
 
 Second. That the plea — which is also very 
 frequently urged — that what everybody 
 does it must be right for the Christian to 
 do, since it cannot be required of him to 
 make himself singular or to banish himself 
 from society, is equally fallacious. This 
 argument will be a good one when every- 
 body studies in everything to follow Christ. 
 But surely it cannot be a safe rule for the 
 Christian to do as the community does 
 when that community, to a large extent, 
 openly denies Christ and repudiates his 
 right to control and guide it. The Chris- 
 tian's rule clearly requires him distinctively 
 to differ from such a community. 
 
 Third. That worldly amusements, in the 
 well-understood sense of that term, mean 
 forms of pleasure which have been invented 
 by the world. They are not home-born to 
 the Christian, but are imported from a 
 foreign soil. They do not belong even to 
 that general economy under which God 
 in his goodness has spread out, as it were, 
 a banquet for all his children to enjoy. 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. 1 79 
 
 They are something which the cravings of 
 men have superadded to that banquet. 
 They are the product of a worldly mind, 
 suited to a worldly taste. The agents who 
 have originated them and who preside over 
 them are not the representatives of the 
 kingdom of God. 
 
 The radical difference between the Chris- 
 tian and the votary of these worldly amuse- 
 ments appears in this — that there can be 
 no reciprocity in their enjoyments. In his 
 association with the worldly man in his 
 amusements the Christian makes a con- 
 cession which the worldly man will not 
 reciprocate. The former is expected to 
 affiliate with the latter, but the latter never 
 affiliates with the former. No one would 
 dream of seeing a frequenter of the theatre 
 or of the race-course going with the Chris- 
 tian neighbor who had been induced to ac- 
 company him to those places of amusement 
 to attend the prayer-meeting or the relig- 
 ious assembly which that neighbor must be 
 supposed to love to attend. The professor 
 of religion must drop his distinctive charac- 
 ter just in the measure that he identifies 
 
l8o FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 himself with those who are so ahen to him 
 in disposition and in taste. He must be- 
 come Hke those who cannot become hke 
 him ; which is certainly very much the same 
 thing as ceasing to act as a Christian. 
 
 The primitive Christians had been ac- 
 customed, many of them, in their uncon- 
 verted days, to attend the gladiatorial shows 
 in which men slaughtered one another for 
 the entertainment of the spectators. These 
 shows formed one of the worldly amuse- 
 ments of the age. They had been invented 
 to give pleasure to a brutal appetite. When 
 converted, these Christians knew that this 
 amusement had never been sanctioned by 
 their divine Master, and knew that in coun- 
 tenancing it they were compromising their 
 character as followers of Christ and throw- 
 ing themselves into the ranks of his ene- 
 mies. They abandoned them, and it is 
 said that through their opposition the bar- 
 barous sport was finally abolished. 
 
 Foui^th. That worldly amusements are 
 extreme forms in which the love of pleasure 
 seeks to gratify itself. They are intemper- 
 ate indulgences, as distinguished from tem- 
 
RELIGION- IN SECULAR LIEE. l8l 
 
 perate ones. Now, intemperance or a tend- 
 ency to go to an extreme in the gratifica- 
 tion of one's appetites is an evidence of 
 a derangement in nature. It shows that 
 what ouorht to be a wholesome cravinor for 
 pleasure has become a feverish thirst. The 
 world says that this thirst must be satisfied, 
 and invents pleasures for the purpose of 
 satisfying it. Religion says that this tend- 
 ency of a deranged nature must be re- 
 sisted. It opposes the law of moderation 
 to the law of excess. As has been stated 
 in a former paragraph, the Christian is re- 
 quired, even in the indulgence of sorrow, 
 to put limits to the expression of his grief, 
 and to avoid the extremes of despondency 
 and woe. And shall not religion equally 
 set bounds to his hilarity? Can he law- 
 fully run to the extremes to which nature 
 would lead him in this direction when he is 
 forbidden to do so in the other? Surely 
 the conscientious Christian ought to feel 
 debarred from following an unbelieving 
 world into the regions of pleasure by the 
 same principle which restrains him from 
 abandoning himself, as nature leads worldly 
 
1 82 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 men to do, to the sway of a hopeless sor- 
 row. Self-denial in either case is demanded 
 of the follower of Christ for Christ's sake. 
 
 Fifth. That the character of worldly 
 amusements is to be estimated very much 
 by the concomitants which they gather 
 around them. 
 
 In its simple form an amusement may be 
 admitted to be innocent, and yet, from the 
 incidents which are invariably associated 
 with it, may be altogether objectionable. 
 This test is particularly applicable to the 
 theatre. '' What greater harm," it is often 
 asked, " can there be in seeing the drama 
 of Hamlet personated on the stage by 
 gifted actors than in reading it in Shake- 
 speare's works ?" Could the former exer- 
 cise be kept free from corrupting adjuncts, 
 as the latter is, the answer might be " No 
 greater." The Christian may read Hamlet 
 as an intellectual entertainment without 
 detriment to his religious state. The ex- 
 hibition of Hamlet on the stage, however, 
 is given for the purpose of deriving a pe- 
 cuniary profit from the attendance of the 
 public. The public indiscriminately must 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. 1 83 
 
 be attracted. The species of the attraction 
 employed is a secondary matter provided 
 the end can be reached — that of drawing to- 
 gether a paying crowd. Mere intellectual 
 gratification would not seem to be sufficient 
 to secure on a large enough scale the desired 
 attendance, and therefore attractions of 
 other sorts — some of them unquestionably 
 of a vicious tendency — must be associated 
 with the exhibition. 
 
 Friendly to virtue as the advocates of 
 the playhouse would make it, they must 
 admit that in the adjuncts which seem to 
 be inseparable from it it is utterly demor- 
 alizing. The same test should be applied 
 to the solution of the question as to the 
 right of the professor of religion to engage 
 in the fashionable dance and the dancing- 
 party. 
 
 This is a question which will almost cer- 
 tainly demand the consideration of the 
 young Christian. Granting that in itself 
 dancing is a harmless exercise, and that 
 in its simpler forms social dancing does not 
 differ from other recreations in which both 
 sexes participate, it may still on good 
 
1 84 FOLLOWING CHRIST, 
 
 s^rounds be urged that the concomitants 
 which have become attached to It In ordi- 
 nary practice have placed it In that category 
 of dissipated and extravagant pleasures in 
 which the religious man cannot consistently 
 indulge. As society employs and patron- 
 izes it — as a cultivated and elaborate art, 
 as an occupation Involving a necessity for 
 ostentatious dressing, for luxurious festiv- 
 ity, for promiscuous association, for the 
 consumption of time In preparation for 
 and recovery from the period of revelry 
 and for risk to bodily health ; as an amuse- 
 ment carrying along with it all the adjuncts 
 of the modern ball — through its surround- 
 ings, dancing has become an entertainment 
 so essentially worldly that the Christian 
 must apparently take leave of his distinct- 
 ive character in taking part In It. It Is a 
 wise rule in regard to customs as well as 
 men to judge them by the company they 
 keep. 
 
 Sixth. That the enjoyment derived from 
 these worldly amusements is purchased at 
 an immense cost. This cost appears in 
 the loss which the pursuit of them entails 
 
RELIGION IN SECULAR LIFE. 1 85 
 
 of a capacity to relish other enjoyments. 
 False appetites or those which have been 
 forced upon nature are stronger than those 
 which originally belong to nature, and in 
 proportion as they are indulged blunt and 
 enfeeble the latter. Devotion to novel- 
 reading thus unfits a person to relish 
 soberer and sounder literature. The Chris- 
 tian who suffers his heart to come under 
 the fascinations of worldly pleasure will 
 dearly pay for the license he has allowed 
 himself. From the numbness which these 
 will infuse into his higher spiritual nature, 
 he will find himself disqualified in a large 
 measure for pure intellectual enjoyment, 
 and in a still larger measure for the enjoy- 
 ment of the peculiar pleasures which re- 
 ligion offers to the genuine living believer. 
 His deadened sensibilities will no more re- 
 spond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, 
 devout meditation will become a weariness, 
 prayer will decline into a heartless form, and 
 the Scriptures will cease to be vocal with 
 the messages of God. 
 
 The conclusion to which a fair inspection 
 of these worldly amusements would lead a 
 
1 86 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 dispassionate mind would seem to be this 
 — that the follower of Christ is required, 
 under the most favorable view he can take 
 of them, to lay down the rule, '' I will in- 
 dulge in them with strict moderation, or 
 within such bounds as may be compatible 
 with my spiritual well-being;" and if, upon 
 experiment, he finds that moderation is im- 
 possible in the case, or that even with it 
 these worldly amusements are unfriendly 
 to his religious comfort and progress, he 
 ought to say, " I will altogether refrain 
 from indulging in them." Probably it is 
 just here on this ground, where the world 
 is addressing its most plausible and seduc- 
 tive solicitations to the Church, that the 
 dividing-line between the Church and the 
 world needs to be most sharply drawn. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 RELIGION IN THE FAMILY. 
 
 SO much of the real, genuine hfe of a 
 man is brought into exercise and into 
 light in the sphere of the family that per- 
 haps it would not be extravagant to say 
 that this sphere is the crucial one for the 
 follower of Christ. 
 
 If a man be a religious man, he will cer- 
 tainly demonstrate the fact at home. If 
 there he fails to exemplify that character, 
 he leaves all other evidences of it, to say 
 the least, open to suspicion. 
 
 The family was the first sanctuary in 
 which religion had a visible birth and in 
 which it took form and voice — the shrine 
 from which divine oracles addressed the 
 soul in advance of the prophets' inspired 
 utterances. In its very organization — in 
 the relations it creates and the offices it 
 institutes — it seems to be an earthly pat- 
 
 187 
 
1 88 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 tern of a heavenly economy or kingdom 
 which God has been pleased to designate 
 as his "house," and in which he appears as 
 presiding as Head over all the inmates and 
 gathering them under his wings as his chil- 
 dren. The typology of the family is so 
 religious that if religion be absent from it, 
 it seems as if its essential element were 
 wantinor. The fact of God's fatherhood 
 toward men is mirrored in every spectacle 
 of a human parent looking down with lov- 
 ing watchfulness upon his little household 
 flock, and the reciprocal obligation on the 
 part of men to acknowledge this fatherhood 
 is symbolized wherever the flock is seen 
 looking up with trusting eyes to the pa- 
 rent's guardian care. 
 
 The interests of the home-life, too, are 
 of such a nature as to make it almost in- 
 dispensable that God should be acknowl- 
 edged and depended upon by the family. 
 They impose upon each member the charge 
 of the well-being of every other member — 
 a charge which in the exercise of it involves 
 an indefinite amount of the tenderest solici- 
 tude and calls for a measure of power and 
 
RELIGION IN THE FAMILY. 1 89 
 
 wisdom which transcends the resources of 
 man. A family without God in it is in a 
 condition Hke that of the household from 
 which the literal head is absent. At every 
 turn it is reminded of its need of his pres- 
 ence. It is painfully incomplete without 
 him. In the world men may do without 
 God ; they cannot do without him at home. 
 Things which may be divorced from him as 
 they are regarded in the place of business 
 are necessarily associated with him when 
 surveyed in the atmosphere of home-life. 
 Bankruptcy means loss of property on the 
 exchange ; it means the loss of bread in 
 the presence of wife and children. The 
 fear of it in the former place stimulates to 
 exertion ; in the latter it extorts the prayer, 
 " Give us this day our daily bread." Sick- 
 ness and death may occur in the community 
 around us, and we accept them as the in- 
 evitable results of the law of nature. They 
 enter our doors, and, though it be an infant 
 who is the victim, every hand is raised, as 
 it were, in resistance, and every voice in- 
 vokes the aid of a power above nature 
 and cries, " God be merciful to the child !" 
 
190 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 Nowhere does God touch us so closely 
 or make us so conscious of our dependence 
 upon him as in die sphere of these home- 
 interests, and nowhere, probably, outside 
 of his Bible, can the Christian find a volume 
 so adapted to foster and train his religious 
 sentiments and principles as that which he 
 may find in his home-experiences. 
 
 And surely, I may add, if the desire to 
 win others to Christ be a natural feature 
 in the mind of a true believer, he will be 
 constrained to evince it most conspicuously 
 in his intercourse with those who are loved 
 by him as he loves his own soul. If a man's 
 religion is to be a light anywhere, ought it 
 not to be such at the central point of his 
 world, and in that little domestic circle with 
 which his life is naturally bound up ? The 
 force of the obligation to make a faithful, 
 and at the same time an attractive, exhi- 
 bition of piety here is simply incalculable. 
 This consideration is sustained by the 
 further thought that if a Christian in his 
 family is not making an impression favor- 
 able to religion, he is in all likelihood do- 
 ing a positive injury to it. The home is 
 
RELIGION IN THE FAMILY. IQI 
 
 the spot where the sharpest possible scru- 
 tiny is always directed to the walk of the 
 professed follower of Christ. The eyes of 
 children are watchful organs, and keen as 
 they are watchful, and their minds are 
 prompt to form judgments upon what they 
 see. Instinctively they put confidence in a 
 parent, and love to bestow that confidence 
 without limit. It is a sad discovery which 
 is made when it is found that that confi- 
 dence has been misplaced — when a child is 
 forced to conclude, through the faults or 
 the inconsistencies observed in a parent, 
 that his religion is not what it professes 
 to be. And it is as disastrous as it is sad, 
 for it shakes the confidence of the child in 
 truth itself. What can be confided in when 
 a parent has proved false ? Perhaps, if 
 the matter were closely sifted, it would be 
 found that the actual deviations from recti- 
 tude which the younger members of a 
 family see in the conduct of their seniors 
 constitute the reason why they are so 
 frequently unaffected by the instructions 
 they receive from their lips. 
 
192 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 The fact is first to be noted that there 
 are peculiar difficulties In the way of main- 
 taining a perfectly reHgious character in 
 the family. 
 
 The importunate demands and the ab- 
 sorbing nature of household cares are 
 familiar to every woman who has a home 
 to superintend. These cares are apt to 
 drive from the mind the thought of God, 
 and to clog the channels through which 
 spiritual motives and influences reach the 
 heart. Unless a perpetual watch is kept 
 up, they will leave the soul as blighted in 
 its religious sensibilities and activities as is 
 the field over which a frosty wind has been 
 sweeping in its verdure and fruit. The in- 
 dependence which a man feels in the en- 
 closure of his home may be fraught with 
 danger. He is there responsible to no ex- 
 ternal authority. The eye of the public is 
 absent, the judgments of the public are 
 withdrawn. The necessity for self-control 
 and for self-restraint is largely removed. 
 
 In this unhampered freedom in which a 
 
RELIGION IX THE EAMJL Y. 1 93 
 
 man indulges when he closes his door upon 
 the world without, he may be betrayed into 
 intemperate practices even through his de- 
 sire for ease and relaxation. The restive- 
 ness which leads him to shake off the yoke 
 of care which has huncr about his neck while 
 
 o 
 
 engaged in the business of the day may go 
 so far as to discard the yoke of duty which 
 religion imposes upon him as the head of a 
 family. The pent-up excitements engen- 
 dered by intercourse with his fellow-men 
 may at home relieve themselves in sour- 
 ness of temper or in expressions of pet- 
 ulance. The chafed spirit may forget to 
 wear before the gaze of children and domes- 
 tics " the gentleness of Christ." The en- 
 dearments with which an expectant house- 
 hold may be ready to greet the returning 
 parent may be repelled as annoyances, and 
 rebukes may chill the hearts which were 
 lonorino- for a caress. Weariness or indis- 
 position may plead for the omission of 
 family prayer and the other offices of do- 
 mestic piety, until gradually every trace of 
 the religious element may disappear from 
 the family-life. 
 
 V.', 
 
194 FOI.T.OIVIXG CHRIST. 
 
 The old law which required the Israelite 
 to write the precepts of the Lord upon 
 the posts of his house and upon his gates 
 (Deut. vi. 9) that he might be reminded of 
 them as often as he crossed the threshold 
 of his home is one which needs virtually to 
 be observed by every Christian, for Satan 
 may still insinuate himself into the domes- 
 tic Eden and beguile both man and woman 
 into foro^etfulness of the commands of God. 
 
 11. 
 
 Household religion does not depend en- 
 tirely upon positive methods and regula- 
 tions. There is a form of it which lies 
 back of these. It is a pervading spirit 
 which gives a religious air or tone to the 
 family-life. It is the result of a quiet — 
 almost an unconscious — respect for the law 
 of God as the principle which shapes in all 
 its particulars the economy or hojisc-law of 
 the family. 
 
 When it is said (Gen. xviii. 19) of Abra- 
 ham's household that they kept the "way 
 of the Lord," it is meant that the whole 
 manner of their domestic life evinced the 
 
RELICION IN riJE FAMILY. 1 95 
 
 fact that they were controlled by a regard 
 for his will. The same thing ought still to 
 be aimed at. Families are as capable of 
 bearing and of exhibitincr character as are 
 individuals. They are corporate units and 
 may be distinguished by specific marks. 
 They have their different habits, pursuits, 
 tastes and enjoyments. They are drawn 
 together or repelled from one another by 
 these predominating qualities. There are 
 homes w^iich the visitor at once feels to be 
 religious homes, and in regard to which he 
 says without any hesitation, '*The Lord is 
 in this place." There are other homes 
 which are just as obviously irreligious. In 
 a moment it is evident to the observer that 
 God is in no way acknowledged in the 
 constitution or the system of living of the 
 family. 
 
 The character of a household will, of 
 course, mainly depend upon those who are 
 at the head of it and who enact and admin- 
 ister its laws, but to some extent it is due 
 to the agency of each member of it. Now, 
 clearly, the follower of Christ will be gross- 
 ly forgetful of his duty everywhere to rep- 
 
196 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 resent the properties of the " salt " or the 
 " leaven " if he does not aim to give to the 
 family to which he belongs a decidedly re- 
 ligious character. This result cannot be 
 reached by a mere display of the symbols 
 of religion, such as the presence of the 
 Bible on a centre-table or the suspending 
 of Scripture mottoes upon the walls, but 
 by the effort of each member of the family 
 himself to live under the influence of Chris- 
 tian motive and principle, and to incite and 
 encourage all the other members to do the 
 same. It is the brilliancy of the separate 
 stars composing it which gives its brilliancy 
 to a constellation. The Holy Spirit, de- 
 veloping those virtues of the heart and 
 those graces of behavior and of manner 
 of which he is the Author, in the person 
 of each individual, will throw the combined 
 lustre of these heaven-kindled lights into 
 the character and the life of the whole fam- 
 ily, and the result will be that the Christian 
 home will stand among its godless neigh- 
 bors an illumined object, like the dwell- 
 ings of the Israelites in the midst of the 
 darkened abodes of the Egyptians. 
 
RELIGION IN THE FAMILY. 1 9/ 
 
 III. 
 
 It is too plain a proposition to call for 
 argument that the maintenance of a relig- 
 ious character in the household requh^es the 
 observance of family worship. 
 
 It is this which most sensibly enthrones 
 God in a home, and by a literal expression 
 of them gives form and tenacity to its re- 
 ligious sentiments. The gathering of a 
 family together for the purpose of wor- 
 shiping God is the most impressive act in 
 which they can engage, and as suggestive 
 or instructive as it is impressive. The 
 echoes of the morning prayer or the Script- 
 ure lesson may linger in the mind of the 
 hearer all through the day, and those of the 
 evening's devotions may stir good thoughts 
 upon the pillow or bring the atmosphere 
 of heaven around the soul as sleep bears 
 it into that mysterious state which is the 
 image of death. The family is such a 
 definite organism, its life is such a joint- 
 stock of interest in which all the members 
 are concerned, and its history necessarily 
 contains so much of the experience of each 
 
198 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 separate constituent, that it would seem it 
 must have some method or vehicle of pro- 
 claimins: its reliorious faith and sentiment. 
 Worship ought to flow through it as nat- 
 urally as music flows through the pipes of 
 an organ. A family which is never heard 
 voicing its united thanksgivings to God or 
 laying its wants and cares before his mer- 
 cy-seat is an anomaly in the world. 
 
 The professor of religion cannot too soon 
 admit to his mind the fact that God, in set- 
 ting him at the head of a family, has set him 
 there that he may be the priest of the house- 
 hold. It is his duty to see that God is wor- 
 shiped in his home, and to seek to train 
 there, as in a nursery, a band of worshipers 
 who may in time perpetuate the hallowed 
 ordinance in other homes. The penalty of 
 a neglect of this duty will undoubtedly ap- 
 pear in the absence of all religious tend- 
 encies in the household. It is worthy of 
 serious thought whether the drift of the 
 youth of the present day away from the 
 Church — a fact which is so much deplored 
 — may not be owing to this cause, the 
 omission of family worship, which is so 
 
RELIGION IN THE EAMILY. 1 99 
 
 largely prevalent in the homes of professed 
 Christians. 
 
 In the case of most persons the difficulty 
 of conducting this exercise is confessedly 
 great — at least, in the first attempt. But 
 the difficulty has been overcome in innu- 
 merable instances, and it should not be re- 
 garded is insurmountable in any. It will 
 be materially diminished by an honest re- 
 flection upon the importance of the end to 
 be attained, and by a simple trust in the 
 aid promised by God to those who sacrifice 
 their own will to his, and it will gradually 
 vanish before repeated experiment. Fam- 
 ily prayer, perfectly to fill its place, should 
 be the free utterance of the person officiating 
 in view of the varying phases of the family 
 history ; and where these are habitually 
 reported to God — as they ought to be — by 
 the Christian parent in the secrecy of the 
 closet, it probably will not be hard to refer 
 to them aorain in the devotions of the do- 
 mestic circle. There may possibly be cases 
 in which the ability to offer a prayer in 
 public can never be acquired. In such 
 cases, I would say, by all means let the 
 
200 FOLLOWING CHRISl'. 
 
 ]:)erson avail himself of the aid of such 
 forms of prayer as may easily be obtained. 
 These may to an imperfect extent give a 
 voice to the family heart, and the use of 
 their utterances is a thousand-fold better 
 than a silent family altar. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Family religion must include, in some 
 form, the instruction of the young in relig- 
 I02is matters. 
 
 A pious parent, who feels that in being 
 pious he is simply being what he ought to 
 be, will feel, on the same grounds, that his 
 children ought to be pious. And what he 
 knows they ought to be he will try to make 
 them. And the process by which a child 
 is to be made anything is education or 
 training. Certainly, he will not become a 
 religious person unless he is taught what 
 religion is and why he should be religious 
 and how he is to be relie'ious. To make 
 no effort whatever in this direction is evi- 
 dently to renounce all the obligations of 
 parental duty. The heart would seem to 
 be destitute of all natural as well as of all 
 
RELIGION IN THE EAMILY. 20I 
 
 religious sensibility that could remain un- 
 moved by the spectacle of a child in its 
 helplessness appealing to a parent to give 
 it the clue which shall safely guide it 
 through the labyrinth of life upon which 
 it has entered. And yet many parents 
 excuse themselves from the attempt or 
 satisfy themselves with delegating the task 
 to servile hands. 
 
 This delinquency becomes the more fla- 
 grant when it occurs in the case of children 
 dedicated, as they generally are by parents 
 professing to be Christians, to God in bap- 
 tism. This holy rite is a mockery if it does 
 not amount to a solemn pledge made to 
 God by the parents to give to their children 
 the instruction and the culture needed to 
 make them religious. No parent should 
 dare to present a child for baptism unless 
 he honestly and faithfully means to do this. 
 It is superstition to seek baptism^ for a child 
 in the belief that the mere application of 
 water and the recital of a set of words will 
 magically work the regeneration of its soul, 
 and it is hypocrisy to profess to desire mem- 
 bership in the kingdom of God for a child 
 
203 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 while the parent has no other purpose 
 than to bring it up for the world or for 
 the devil. 
 
 The plea of incompetency is here again 
 used to cover the neglect of parental duty. 
 But surely any one who himself knows what 
 it is to be a Christian can teach a child in 
 many ways, indirect as well as direct, what 
 it is to be one, or can in many particulars 
 — and these perhaps the most essential 
 — make him understand the difference be- 
 tween a man who is a Christian and one 
 who is not. There are capacities — I might 
 even call them instincts — in the nature of 
 every child which point toward religion, 
 and these may be fostered and cultivated. 
 The nurture which is needed for this pur- 
 pose is of the simplest sort. One does not 
 require to be an adept in theology or a 
 master in casuistry to call forth and to train 
 such sentiments as conscientiousness, de- 
 pendence upon God, reverence for his word 
 and ordinances, complacency in virtue and 
 aversion to vice, and delight in the evi- 
 dences of divine loveliness contained in the 
 character and the life of Christ. All of 
 
RELIGION IN THE FAMILY. 203 
 
 these are to be found waiting for develop- 
 ment in a youthful mind. 
 
 Every parent professing to be a follower 
 of Christ oucrht to be able to do these two 
 things : first, so firmly to attach to himself 
 the respect, the confidence and the affec- 
 tion of a child that nothing shall ever en- 
 tirely obliterate them ; and second, to fasten 
 upon the child's mind the conviction that 
 those qualities in the parent which have 
 excited these feelings are due to his re- 
 ligion. When these things have been 
 done, a volume of instruction will have 
 been imparted which may be more potent 
 than any formal homilies or any catecheti- 
 cal lessons. A mother beloved, and always 
 appearing lovely through the charm which 
 her piety gives her, is a living evangel 
 perpetually preaching to the heart and the 
 conscience of a child, and has been made 
 in many instances the wisdom and the 
 power of God unto the salvation of her 
 child. 
 
 In teaching the young, the Bible is, of 
 course, the source from which is to be 
 drawn the knowledge to be communicated, 
 
204 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 and Instruction is the imparting of this 
 knowledge. The manner in which it is to 
 be conveyed must be very much determined 
 by the wise discretion of the parent. Aids 
 in the formal part of this work are to be 
 found in the elementary expositions of 
 Scripture furnished by all the churches. 
 There is, however, an informal way of giv- 
 ing instruction in religion which should 
 never be divorced from the formal, and 
 which may be even more effective than 
 that. It consists more in trahiino- than in 
 teaching — in showing a child how he is to 
 apply the principles and actually to put in 
 practice the precepts of the Bible. The 
 same arts which are employed in teaching 
 an infant to walk, and to walk in safe places, 
 should be employed in teaching a young 
 soul to take its steps and to choose its 
 paths in the service of God. 
 
 V. 
 
 Religion in the family may be expected, 
 on many accounts, to give a prominent 
 place to the observance of the Sabbath. 
 
 The Sabbath and the family are kindred 
 
RELIGION IN THE FAMILY. 20$ 
 
 institutions, derived from the same source 
 — the ordination of God — and aimincr at the 
 same end, the rescuingf of the soul from the 
 wearying and the hardening influences of 
 secular life. The answer to the Saviour's 
 prayer in behalf of his exposed disciples, 
 " I pray not that thou shouldest take them 
 out of the world, but that thou shouldest 
 keep them from the evil" (John xvii. 15), 
 very largely comes through the channels 
 of the home and the Sabbath. Through 
 God's blessing the home may become the 
 sanctuary within which the " evil " which 
 everywhere tracks the steps of the follower 
 of Christ while out in the world cannot in- 
 trude ; and, in order to this, it needs to be 
 shielded and barred by the hallowing influ- 
 ences of a weekly Sabbath against the 
 assaults of " evil." 
 
 The benefits conferred upon a household 
 by the day of sacred rest are so many and 
 so great that the family which does not in- 
 clude in its house-law the fourth command- 
 ment, and which does not make provision 
 for the keeping of it, would proclaim its 
 ingratitude as loudly as it proclaims its ir- 
 
2o6 FOLLOW/XC CHA'IST. 
 
 reverence ; and the retribution for such a 
 failure will probably appear in the loss of 
 many of those special blessings, temporal 
 as well as spiritual, which the household 
 institution was intended to bestow. 
 
 The effort to make a family a Sabbath- 
 keeping one will require much circumspec- 
 tion and study on the part of the heads of 
 the household. Errors may be committed 
 either on the side of over-strictness or on 
 that of over-laxness. To strike the mean 
 between the two — and in this case it is a 
 "golden" one — is not easy. The first 
 requisite is to familiarize a family with the 
 idea that Sabbath-keeping is a law of the 
 household. It should be made to take its 
 place in the order of the family-life as nat- 
 urally as the occupations of the weekdays 
 take theirs. 
 
 The methods may vary more or less in 
 their details in different households, but in 
 all cases they must aim at distinguishing the 
 Sabbath from other days, and distinguishing 
 it by giving it a religious character. House- 
 hold regulations should show this difference, 
 and show it in a negative way, perhaps, as 
 
RELIC mx I.y THE FAMILY. 20/ 
 
 much as in a positive one — that is, as far as 
 practicable, they should exclude from the 
 Sabbath the employments of the weekday 
 and the things which by association excite 
 thought about these employments. The 
 mind should be disencumbered of the bur- 
 den of worldly care which the mere sight 
 of the symbols of it lays upon it. On this 
 account, if no other, the secular newspaper 
 should be eschewed. It is in this way that 
 the Sabbath most effectively verifies its 
 name as a day of rest, for rest largely con- 
 sists in the emancipation of the mind from 
 a sense of the obligation to toil. Even the 
 badges of servitude need to be withdrawn 
 in order that it may feel truly free. 
 
 There is far more rest to be derived from 
 laying this injunction — to use a legal phrase 
 — upon the encroaching anxieties of worldly 
 life than is to be found in the stupefaction 
 of literal sleep. Rest, however, is not to 
 be confounded with inaction. It consists, 
 rather, in a change of action. The Sab- 
 bath, therefore, needs its occupations, and 
 the difficulty in keeping it is to find these 
 occupations and to give them a pleasant 
 
208 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 aspect. Among them, of course, there 
 should be a due attention to the pubhc 
 worship of God. Where this cannot be 
 rendered, as is sometimes the case in rural 
 districts, there should be substituted family 
 reading of the Scriptures, with singing and 
 prayer. Families in which sacred music 
 is cultivated will find themselves in posses- 
 sion of a decided advantage in the matter 
 ot Sabbath-keeping. Mere neighborly vis- 
 iting and social festivity, simply because 
 they are associated with the ordinary 
 worldly life, ought to be suspended on 
 the Sabbath, but visiting for purposes of 
 mercy is a legitimate employment, and 
 perhaps should receive more attention 
 than it does. Weary hours might profit- 
 ably be filled up in this way. 
 
 The quiet of the day of rest should evi- 
 dently be improved by persons who have 
 little leisure for religfious readino- durinsf 
 the week. And in the sweet reunion of 
 the day large scope may be given to the 
 interchange of home endearments. The 
 domestic affections are sacred things, and 
 the expression of them is not inconsistent 
 
RELIGIOM IN THE FA MI I. Y. 209 
 
 with the hallowing of the Sabbath. The 
 caress of a parent may give the best pos- 
 sible emphasis to the admonitions he has 
 been addressing to a child. The day that 
 most copiously sheds its dews upon the 
 household heart and wakens into fresh 
 vigor the spirit of family love is giving 
 thereby not the least proof that it is itself 
 the eift of Heaven and is fulfilling the end 
 for which it was created. A father absent 
 from his little flock — as many fathers are — 
 during the week should feel that it is his 
 privilege on the Sabbath to enjoy the bless- 
 ing which God meant to bestow upon him 
 in the companionship of that little flock. 
 He should be glad himself, and should 
 make all about him glad. There need be 
 no restriction to the cheerfulness of the 
 day except that which naturally arises from 
 the reflection that the Sabbath is relioious 
 
 o 
 
 in its character, and must so recognize God 
 as its Proprietor that even its gladness 
 shall be sanctified by the spirit of wor- 
 ship." 
 
 14 
 
2IO FOLLOWING CL/AWST. 
 
 VI. 
 
 All methods for maintaining or promoting 
 piety in a family will fail, however, if they 
 are not sustained by a consistent, syniniet- 
 rical and cleajdy -marked piety in the heads 
 of it. 
 
 From them the younger and inferior 
 members will be continually getting their 
 impression of the religion of Christ ; and 
 the follower of Christ needs to be a fol- 
 lower in whom there is no guile, and in 
 regard to whose sincerity there can be no 
 question within the precincts of a home. 
 In the intimate associations of the house- 
 hold circle people come thoroughly to un- 
 derstand and to appreciate one another. 
 Character cannot succeed in wearing a 
 mask there. A parent who does not prac- 
 tice religion will frustrate the purpose of 
 all his teachings. It is always to be borne 
 in mind that children are not — generally, at 
 least — disposed to be religious. The natu- 
 ral or " carnal mind " in them as in others 
 is " enmity against God." It soon shows a 
 repugnance to his law. The regimen it im- 
 
KEI.IGIOX IN THE FAMILY. 211 
 
 poses upon them puts an annoying check 
 upon the wild play of their desires and 
 passions, and is a yoke which they are only 
 too ready to elude where an occasion or a 
 pretext is offered them. If any ground to 
 distrust the claim of religion to be the rule 
 and the exponent of goodness and the power 
 which makes men good is presented to them 
 in the conduct of those w^ho profess to be 
 its representatives, this aversion to it will 
 gather strength as the flame does when 
 fuel is added to it. In this matter the Sa- 
 viour's saying (Matt. xii. 30) is emphatically 
 true : " He that is not with me is against 
 me, and he that gathereth not with me 
 scattereth abroad." 
 
 Let the Christian parent never forget 
 that the '' demonstration " which the Holy 
 Spirit will use in converting his children 
 lies, to a ereat extent, in that which he is 
 making of the purity and the excellence of 
 godliness. They need to be won from dis- 
 like to the service of God by the sweet 
 compulsion which forces them to love the 
 parent or the kinsman whom religion has 
 made worthy of their love. Everything in 
 
212 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 that parent or that kinsman which reveals 
 a defect or a blemish in his character will 
 be a weight in the scale against religion. 
 It is the poor specimen of religion which 
 professedly Christian men are exhibiting 
 in their homes, probably, which more than 
 anything else contributes to the readiness 
 with which young people are taking In the 
 current unbelief of the age or adopting the 
 sophisms which beguile them Into a worldly 
 or a sensual life. The man who carries 
 with him in his memory the Image of a 
 father or a mother In which every cherished 
 feature Is Irradiated with the lustre of a 
 genuine piety cannot easily become an in- 
 fidel or sink so low in baseness as to call 
 that a delusion or a falsehood which has 
 enshrined such an Image In his memory. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 RELIGION ALWAYS AND E VER Y WHERE. 
 
 THE phrase " following Christ " obvi- 
 ously implies that a religious life is to 
 be characterized by uniformity and stability. 
 In the nature of it. it ought to be a contin- 
 uous and an equable process. It is motion 
 produced by the ceaseless attraction of a 
 perpetually present object, not the fitful stir 
 caused by occasional and irregular impulses. 
 It is something by which the Christian is 
 always and everywhere to be distinguished. 
 In looking at it in various departments and 
 under different relations, as we have been 
 doing in the preceding pages, we have still 
 considered it as one unbroken thread weav- 
 ing itself into the warp of circumstance and 
 maintaining its unity amidst all the facts 
 with which it becomes intertwined. This 
 comprehensive idea, containing, as it does, 
 
 213 
 
214 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 a summary of all the details of religious 
 living, may suggest a few further reflections 
 as a conclusion to this little treatise. 
 
 I. 
 
 It leads us, first, to the conclusion that 
 the presence of the Christian spirit in a 
 man is demonstrated by the pemitanence of 
 Ms convictions, sentiments and piHnciples rather 
 than by what are called " frames of mind " 
 or " excited emotions." 
 
 The awakening of any new affection in 
 the soul if it be a wholesome one, or the 
 apprehending of any new truth by it if it 
 be a valuable one, will naturally be at- 
 tended by a certain fiush or exhilaration 
 of feeling. This is to be expected in re- 
 ligion as well as in other phases of experi- 
 ence. No man can be conscious of the 
 springing up in his heart of such an affec- 
 tion as love to God, or can seize with an 
 appropriating faith such a truth as that 
 " there is therefore, now, no condemnation 
 to them which are in Christ Jesus " (Rom. 
 viii. i), without being by it transported into 
 a distinct element of pleasure. A Chris- 
 
RELIGION AL WA YS AND E VEK YWHERE. 2 1 5 
 
 tian, passing — as he sometimes does very 
 sensibly — from darkness into light, will 
 give evidence of the change as much by 
 his joyful sensations as by his clear per- 
 ceptions. Sometimes a new song is liter- 
 ally put into his mouth, and his rapture may 
 be unspeakable. 
 
 Now, these first symptoms of a religious 
 life are not to be taken as the abidino- inci- 
 dents of it. In ceasing- to be new the af- 
 fections and the beliefs which are coincident 
 with the becrinninp- of such a life cease to 
 excite the subject with their original force 
 and are entertained without any percep- 
 tible mental agitation. They show their 
 presence by their fixedness rather than by 
 their vehemence. The intense blaze into 
 which a fire is fanned at the kindlinor of 
 it dies down, but the fire fastened upon the 
 ignited fuel burns on and emits its heat all 
 the day. It is so in religion. It is a mis- 
 take to make elevated frames of feelinor the 
 main proof of spiritual life. This is to put 
 a concomitant of relifjion for relimon itself. 
 There are times and places where the flame 
 may be expected to blaze out, but the fire 
 
2l6 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 is the substantial thing which always and 
 everywhere burns on with a steady glow. 
 The Christian is known, and may know 
 himself, better by those demonstrations 
 which are uniform and regular than by 
 those which are occasional and extreme. 
 That "abidinor" in Christ which the Sa- 
 viour makes the test of the living disciple 
 (John XV. 4) must consist in such exercises 
 as are suitable to all occasions and all con- 
 ditions. The "just" man, like his type the 
 "shining light" (Prov. iv. 18), should at any 
 hour of the day be found in his orbit, fol- 
 lowing with an unwavering step the path 
 appointed for him by his great Lawgiver, 
 Christ. 
 
 II. 
 
 The obligation to be religious always and 
 everywhere implies that a Christian should 
 habitually be found in a state of preparation 
 for all religious duties, and for any partic- 
 ular religious duty which may suddenly 
 arise. 
 
 The orenuine artisan carries his wit and 
 his skill with him, and is ready to respond 
 to any call that may be made upon him 
 
RELIGION AL WA YS AND E VEK V WHERE. 2 1 7 
 
 without having to wait to sharpen his in- 
 struments and to quicken his faculties. So 
 '' the man of God " needs to be '* thorough- 
 ly furnished unto all good works" (2 Tim. 
 iii. 17). His soul should be always charged 
 with the divine life, and not be required, 
 like an exhausted battery, from time to 
 time to be replenished with spiritual force. 
 The follower of Christ who has to be waked 
 up or recalled from some truant position 
 every time his Master summons him to a 
 service is certainly indulging himself in 
 criminal drowsiness or presumption. The 
 religious power or inspiration in the healthy 
 Christian is something which is always as 
 literally on hand and ready for use as is 
 the natural power which leads to locomo- 
 tion or the natural inspiration which prompts 
 to oratitude or to indiornation. Men do not 
 have to prepare to walk, nor deliberately 
 to kindle an emotion before they can thank 
 a benefactor or rebuke a wronor-doer. 
 
 A consistent and continuous following of 
 Christ will keep the professor of religion 
 always in a state of preparation for any 
 duty which his religion imposes upon him. 
 
2l8 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 Temptation will never find him off his 
 guard. An appeal to a religious motive 
 will receive an instantaneous response. 
 The call of Christ, '* Go work to-day in 
 my vineyard," at whatever moment it may 
 come, will meet with the prompt and honest 
 reply, '' I go, sir." The wise virgins were 
 provided with oil in their vessels and could 
 keep their lamps always burning. There 
 could be no jar upon their nerves, and 
 there need be no flutter of . mind or sinkino- 
 of heart when the cry, " Behold, the bride- 
 groom cometh !" smote upon their ears at 
 the midnig'ht hour. 
 
 The dependence upon special prepara- 
 tion as each step in the religious life is to 
 be taken is sio-nificant of a lame and an 
 uncomfortable walk. It assumes that relia- 
 ion is something extraordinary — something 
 apart from common life ; so that whenever 
 an exhibition of it is required, there must 
 be a shifting of the soul from one plane to 
 another or a putting on of a new character 
 for the occasion. Why should the man who 
 is accustomed to pray for himself, and who 
 knows how to tell his own wants to God, 
 
RELIGION AL WA YS AND E VER YVVHERE. 2 I9 
 
 feel embarrassment, and perhaps give a 
 refusal, when asked to pray for another ? 
 And why should so many professed Chris- 
 tians, when unexpectedly finding themselves 
 present where the Lord's Supper is to be 
 administered, decline to participate in it on 
 the ground that they have had no opportu- 
 nity for preparation ? Does not such scru- 
 pulousness, while it seems to express rever- 
 ence for the holy ordinance, just as plainly 
 confess that in their ordinary state they are 
 lacking in the faith and the love which be- 
 lievers ought always and everywhere to 
 cherish toward their divine Redeemer? 
 
 A healthy condition of soul ought to 
 have in it a sufficiency of warmth to make 
 it able and ready at all times, without any 
 special heating, to answer any demand 
 for an expression of affection or devo- 
 tion which Christ might present. It would 
 carry the believer through all the extraor- 
 dinary emergencies into which duty might 
 call him as naturally as the waters of a 
 full stream fill all the depressions and fit 
 into all the windings of the channel through 
 which it tiows. 
 
220 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 III. 
 
 Those peculiar privileges of the Chris- 
 tian life which are represented under the 
 terms peace and comfort and joy are the 
 product of that kind of religion which 
 manifests itself always and everywhere. 
 
 The delightful sensations of health are 
 not produced by tonics and stimulants. It 
 is the combined play of all the organs of 
 the body in the discharge of their regular 
 functions which produces those sensations. 
 The Christian who is not well poised and 
 equable in his religious frames, who is al- 
 ways alternating between high states and 
 low states of feeling, and who drops back 
 into coldness as soon as the blast of some 
 special excitement is turned off from his 
 emodons, is not living in a healthy way. He 
 will know litde of true comfort in religion, 
 or of genuine joy in believing, or of that 
 peace of God which is able to keep his 
 heart and mind through Christ Jesus. A 
 setded faith in Christ, a fixed determinadon 
 to follow him, a hearty and entire commit- 
 ment of the soul to the method of salvation 
 
RELIGION AL \VA YS AND F.VKR YWIIERE. 22 I 
 
 and the order of living proposed in the gos- 
 pel, so that a suspicion as to one's being in 
 Christ or a doubt as to the obligation of 
 serving him in any particular would seem 
 as anomalous as would a suspicion as to 
 one's existence or a doubt as to obeying 
 the laws of nature, — these things, which 
 simply mean that a Christian is to be al- 
 ways and everywhere a Christian, are 
 fundamental to all spiritual enjoyment. 
 O professor of religion, in all positions, 
 steadfastly, consistently, inflexibly, be what 
 you profess to be, and religion will do for 
 you all it promises to do. 
 
 One thing only is needed to secure the 
 evenness of the Christian's walk, and that is 
 always and everywhere to keep Christ in his 
 eye as the object and the mark of his high 
 calling. The lieht which o-leams from the 
 window of his home, kept constantly in 
 view by the traveler groping his way to- 
 ward it in the dark, is not only a guide 
 to show him the right direction, but also 
 an inspiration to help him over the casual 
 obstructions of his path and a monitor to 
 remind him of the illusions of the night by 
 
\ 
 222 FOLLOIV/NG CHRIST. 
 
 means of which he might be beguiled into 
 a wrong road. The Christian who thus 
 perpetually has Christ before him does not 
 need special signals to assure him that he 
 is in the way of heaven. He knows it just 
 as he knows that he is always and every- 
 where following Christ. 
 
 IV. 
 Unhappily, professors of religion are not 
 always consistent mid steadfast in their fol- 
 lowing of Christ. 
 
 Disciples of Jesus may be found sleep- 
 ing where he has commanded them to 
 watch. Through heedlessness they may 
 have allowed themselves to be '' overtaken 
 ' with a fault." Like Demas, they may have 
 , forsaken the post of duty through love of 
 this present world. They may even, like 
 I Peter, apostatize so far as to deny their 
 Lord and to associate themselves with his 
 enemies. 
 
 Such defections on the part of Christians 
 are, of course, at variance with all their 
 obligations. They are criminal enough to 
 make them fatal. And yet such breaches 
 
RKI.IGIOK AL ]VA YS AND EVER YIVII ERE. 223 
 
 do not necessarily sever the connection be- 
 tween the soul and Christ. " If we believe 
 not, yet he abideth faithful" (2 Tim. ii. 13). 
 Always and everywhere present, he is still 
 within the sio^ht and the reach of his incon- 
 stant follower however far he may have 
 wandered. The constancy and the un- 
 changeableness of Jesus give hope to the 
 backslider. He follows the straying sheep 
 which has temporarily ceased to follow him. 
 This fact keeps unbroken the connection 
 between them. The storm has bruised the 
 frail reed and bent it downward to the dust, 
 but the sun looks upon it in its prostration 
 and with the touch of its ray again lifts it 
 into uprightness. So the touch of the Sa- 
 viour's gracious hand is on the believer, 
 even as he stands on the verge of forsaking 
 his Master, so long as there is left in his 
 heart a single yearning to prompt him to 
 recoil from the final step, and, looking back 
 to Jesus, to cry, "To whom shall I go ? 
 Thou hast the words of eternal life." Be- 
 neath all the accumulated oruilt under which 
 the faithless Peter lay Jesus could see the 
 spark of love still glowing in his breast, and 
 
224 FOLLOWING CHRIST, 
 
 by the question, "Simon, son of Jonas, lov- 
 est thou me ?" drew from him the response, 
 *' Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knovv- 
 est that 1 love thee," by which his erring 
 spirit swung back to the point of loyalty 
 and devotion. 
 
 To the fallen Christian I would say, Still, 
 in the depth of your sin and shame, follow 
 Christ. Follow those craving impulses 
 which are drawing you to him, and which 
 forbid you to think that he has abandoned 
 you. Follow them hopefully as the calls 
 by which he is inviting you to return. 
 They will bring you back to your right 
 position in regard to him. They may even 
 ensure the result that in the future you 
 shall follow him with a more abiding stead- 
 fastness of purpose, and with a warmth of 
 love quickened by the remembrance of 
 your past errors. 
 
 V. 
 
 The habitual following of Christ is the 
 condition of \k\2X progress in religious char- 
 acter and activity which every professor of 
 religion is expected to make. 
 
RELIGION AL WA YS AND EVKR Y WHERE. 22$ 
 
 To follow is to copy or to imitate. To 
 follow Christ is to become like Christ. This 
 was one of the ends contemplated by God 
 in the scheme of redemption : " For whom 
 he did- foreknow, he also did predestinate 
 to be conformed to the image of his Son, 
 that he might be the first-born among many 
 brethren " (Rom. viii. 29). This purpose 
 will undoubtedly be effected in the case of 
 all who, with Christ as the ideal of the man 
 of God in their eye, are striving to approach 
 nearer and nearer to him in spiritual char- 
 acter and life. Such a following of Jesus 
 will ensure the growth of the Christian, and 
 will probably make it apparent to others, 
 whether he sees and feels it or not. The 
 infant grows to the stature of manhood 
 without beino- able to detect the stages of 
 the process through which he is passing. 
 
 The conditions of growth are to be ob- 
 served ; the manner of it is inscrutable. 
 The child of God grows into the perfected 
 man in the same way. As Christ is formed 
 in him, he is conformed to Christ ; and as 
 he resembles Christ, he becomes the perfect 
 man. The Holy Spirit, whose office it is to 
 If) 
 
226 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 make men holy, accomplishes his work by 
 bringing them more and more into assimi- 
 lation to Christ. This he does by constant- 
 ly keeping them under the influence of the 
 direct vision of Christ: "We all, with open 
 face, beholding as in a glass the glory of 
 the Lord, are changed into the same image, 
 from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit 
 of the Lord" (2 Cor. iii. 18). Always and 
 everywhere following Christ, the believer 
 may rest in the assurance that God is fin- 
 ishing his work in his soul and carrying 
 him along, stage after stage, in that process 
 of growth by which he is to be presented 
 faultless and complete in Christ Jesus. 
 
 VI. 
 
 As following Christ aims, as its present 
 result, at making the believer like Christ, 
 so, as its ultimate result, it aims at bringing 
 the believer into personal associatioji with 
 Christ. 
 
 " Father, I will that they also whom thou 
 hast given me, be with me, where I am," 
 was the last prayer offered by Jesus for his 
 disciples on earth (John xvii. 24). To be 
 
RELIGION ALWA YS AND EVER Y WHERE. 22/ 
 
 present with the Lord, St. Paul tells us, is 
 coincident with being absent from the body. 
 The following of Christ ends at death in 
 an introduction to the presence of Christ. 
 The process has this consummation infalli- 
 bly guaranteed to it, and the believer, in 
 pursuing it, is warranted in encouraging 
 himself with the expectation of this glo- 
 rious issue. The follower of Christ ought, 
 therefore, in consistency, to include this 
 residence with his Lord in his view of the 
 future, and to be accustomed to solace him- 
 self amidst the labors and hardships of his 
 earthly walk with the anticipation of heaven. 
 This hope will often be the only anchor 
 which can keep his soul steadfast in the 
 storms of life. This is not saying that it 
 is required of the Christian that he should 
 desire to die. This would be to act insane- 
 ly. It would be to deny his nature and 
 really to long to extinguish the being to 
 which, both by his own instincts and by the 
 will of his Maker, he is bidden to cling. It 
 is not the spirit of the mystic buried, in a 
 mistaken pursuit of holiness, in a monastic 
 prison or desert, and dreaming of the con- 
 
228 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 tents of a paradise which in his imagination 
 floats above him, that he is to exhibit. But, 
 just as he knows that this Hfe is to have an 
 end, it is his privilege to look beyond that 
 end and to construe its ending into the in- 
 ception of a higher state of being, and to 
 balance against the ills of time and the 
 painful cost of fidelity to God now the rest 
 and the blessedness which are pledged to 
 those who are faithful unto the end in fol- 
 lowinor Christ. 
 
 It is the man who most truly values and 
 uses this life as a period of service for 
 Christ who is most truly showing his fit- 
 ness for the inheritance and the crown 
 which Christ will award to his loyal follow- 
 ers. But there may be an aspiration in 
 the Christian's soul reaching heavenward 
 all the while that the natural love of life 
 is asserting itself in that soul. It is the 
 aspiration which is always aiming at some- 
 thing better beyond which nerves and sus- 
 tains the spirit in the whole struggle of life. 
 The child of God cannot be content with 
 present attainments, with present joys, but 
 must be conscious of an aspiration which 
 
RELIGION AL IV A YS AND EVERYWHERE. 229 
 
 looks beyond these to the glory which is 
 to be revealed. He is saved by the hope 
 which forecasts the being with Christ as well 
 as by the faith which relies upon Christ, for 
 the former is the product of the latter. 
 
 It is not impatience under the present 
 allotments of Providence, not the chafing 
 of the soul at the burdens and restraints 
 with which it is environed, not the pas- 
 sionate beating of the imprisoned breast 
 against the bars of its cage, which denote 
 the temper of the Christian, but it is the 
 quiet waiting of the watcher who during 
 the night-hours encourages himself with the 
 prospect of the daybreak, and the cheerful 
 ongoing of the pilgrim pressing through 
 the rigors of the wilderness to the Canaan 
 beyond the flood. 
 
 Follower of Christ, familiarize your mind 
 with the thought that soon and for ever you 
 are to be with the Lord. Set over against 
 all the attractions of this life the attractions 
 of the life which is to come. Assert your 
 kinship with God by daring to say, " I shall 
 be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness." 
 This anticipation, this aspiration, always 
 
230 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 and everywhere kept in your mind, will 
 loosen your attachment to this world, will 
 chasten your ardor in the pursuit of its 
 joys, will lighten the pressure of its mo- 
 mentary sufferings, and will enable you, 
 while sharing in the apostle's blessed as- 
 surance, '' Now are we the sons of God," 
 to share also in his exulting hope for the 
 future : " It doth not yet appear what we 
 shall be, but we know that when he shall 
 appear, we shall be like him, for we shall 
 see him as he is." 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 IT may be well, in order to give practical 
 point and direction to the didactic dis- 
 cussions contained in the previous chapters, 
 to sum them up in a series of resolutions 
 embodying — at least, partially — the conclu- 
 sions to which we have been brought. It 
 is the resolution to perform a duty which 
 gives effect to a conviction of duty. The 
 man who, by becoming a church-member, 
 has acknowledo^ed his obligation to lead a 
 religious life, and by that solemn act has 
 engaged to lead such a life, should deliber- 
 ately shape his convictions into resolutions, 
 with the sincere determination to carry 
 them into practice. To aid him in this 
 work, the following schedule is appended 
 to this treatise. 
 
 231 
 
232 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 I am resolved, as a member of that dis- 
 tinct body of Christ's followers to which I 
 have attached myself, constantly to bear in 
 mind the responsibilities which belong to 
 my corporate character, and in all circum- 
 stances to conduct myself as a personal 
 representative of that religion which the 
 Church of Christ was appointed to illustrate 
 to the world. 
 
 II. 
 
 I am resolved to make the Bible my life- 
 long study, and to seek, through the bless- 
 ing of the Holy Spirit upon my effort, to 
 grow more and more in the knowledge of 
 divine truth, that I may live more and more 
 under the power of it. 
 
 III. . 
 I am resolved always to be present at 
 the house of God at the stated times of 
 public worship, unless the providence of 
 God should by some clear obstruction pre- 
 vent my attendance. 
 
CONCL US ION. 233 
 
 IV. 
 I am resolved habitually to practice se- 
 cret prayer, and to accustom myself to think 
 of God and to commune with him during 
 the occupations of the day. 
 
 V. 
 
 I am resolved to make my family relig- 
 ious as well as myself, and to this end to 
 see that they keep holy the Sabbath-day, 
 to teach them to become worshipers of 
 God by leading them to the place of pub- 
 lic worship and by conducting worship 
 with them at home, and to inculcate upon 
 them the idea that the law of the house- 
 hold is the law of the Lord. 
 
 VI. 
 I am resolved to keep Christ in my view 
 as the model whom I am to follow, and not 
 the imperfect types of piety which I may see 
 in the professed Christians around me. 
 
 VII. 
 I am resolved to watch against my pecu- 
 liar infirmities and perseveringly to en- 
 
234 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 deavor to subdue the faults to which I 
 
 am liable. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 I am resolved to be scrupulously honest 
 and truthful in all my dealings with my fel- 
 low-men. 
 
 IX. 
 
 I am resolved to cultivate charitable feel- 
 ings toward all my fellow-members of the 
 church, to yield respect to the counsels of 
 its officers, and to show such consideration 
 for my pastor as to inform him of any occa- 
 sion for his services which may occur, 
 through sickness or otherwise, in my fam- 
 ily or my neighborhood. 
 
 X. 
 
 I am resolved, while acting with kindness 
 
 and courtesy toward all, to abstain from 
 
 such associations, amusements and places 
 
 of resort as might be detrimental to my 
 
 own spiritual good or expose me to the 
 
 charofe of o-ivinof countenance to the en- 
 
 emies of Christ. 
 
 XI. 
 
 I am resolved to do my part according 
 
 to my ability in bearing the burdens and 
 
CONCLUSION, 235 
 
 sustaining the benevolent enterprises of 
 the Church. 
 
 XII. 
 
 I am resolved to keep myself informed 
 in regard to the work of the Church and 
 the progress of Christ's kingdom in the 
 world, and for this purpose to provide 
 myself and my family, where this is pos- 
 sible, with some religious periodical. 
 
 XIIL 
 
 I am resolved, in humble dependence 
 upon Christ's help, to maintain my loyalty 
 to him under all the temptations which 
 may come to me through the allurements 
 or the oppositions of the world, or through 
 the successes or the reverses which may 
 be included in my lot in life. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 I am resolved to place my devotion to 
 my worldly business under such restric- 
 tions that it shall never interfere with the 
 duties which I owe to God as a Christian 
 and as a church-member. 
 
236 FOLLOWING CHRIST. 
 
 XV. 
 
 I am resolved to remember that as a 
 child of God I am also his heir, destined 
 to inherit a heavenly home which I may 
 at any moment be called upon to enter, 
 and to use this expectation and this hope 
 as a constant means of checking an inor- 
 dinate attachment to the present world 
 and of keeping myself in a state of readi- 
 ness for my departure from it, endeavor- 
 ing, in imitation of the apostle's faith, to 
 say, "To me to live is Christ, and to die 
 is gain " (Phil. i. 21). 
 
 THE END. 
 
7/-