Christian Life by Jos. Clarke

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 29, 1867

Christian Life.

By Jos. Clarke

The Christian life is called a warfare. Satan and his agencies war against good, while Jesus, the angels, and the people of God war against evil. Satan feels at liberty to use every wicked and subtle art, to carry out his designs, while Jesus Christ, his angels, and people strive lawfully against evil.

In order to gain a footing in this world, Satan condescended to low dissimulation and deceit, not with any good will to man, but with malice and hatred toward God; not because God had done him harm, but because God had so highly honored him that he thought himself almost equal with God; and because God denied him this last honor, he endeavored to pledge all Heaven in his own behalf, for which crime he fell, and falling he became wholly alien from God.

More especially did his malice show itself when he caused our first parents to sin, thus establishing a precedent in this earth, then a Paradise, in favor of himself and his wicked rebellion. Thus did he gain a host of subjects and sympathizers, who should for a season be a solace and a comfort to his wounded spirit.

All this time Heaven looked on him rather with pity; and nowhere is God's forbearance more manifest than in his sparing this fallen angel for a time, and those who fell with him, to manifest to the universe his own forbearance and long-suffering, while at the same time Jehovah had an undoubted right to put an end to all the lives of those who rebelled, with the mighty Apostate himself who bound his followers by an oath to remain in his interest.

Having established a precedent in causing our first parents to sin, Satan proceeds to cause their posterity to depart from God, and so successful has he been, that nothing so enrages him now as to find one who denies his authority, and to subvert such, he uses every art and device.

Arrayed against the Archapostate, we behold the same Michael, whose glittering sword once drove the rebel angels from their then happy home—still a happy home, but for the good and true, and not for those who swore fealty to the ambitious Azazel. Still we see the noble defender of Heaven's rights and laws, on the seat of justice. Once his sword fell mightily upon the rebel ranks, and his countenance was more terrible than the lightning to the hosts of Satan; now that countenance beams with benevolence and love. But is it because he hates rebellion less? No, he waits the time when the harvest of the earth is fully ripe; then will he appear as terrible to the wicked as when he led the armies of Heaven to victory over Satan's confederate rebellious hosts; and that countenance, so fearful in war against evil, will be ineffably lovely to those who have sympathized with him in the contest.

The people of God have a part to act in the great controversy which has been going on for six thousand years. Those in the past have acted their part, and, aided by the holy angels, they have fought the good fight; sometimes active in labors and good works, or passive in forbearance under insult, calumny, imprisonment, and painful sufferings, they have testified that they were the subjects of the true God, by obedience, love, truth, and faith.

The wicked are asleep to the fact, that by every act of disobedience to God, and of complaisance to Satan, they are furnishing Satan with fetters to bind them to his car, as his subjects. They do not realize that Satan claims them as his, because they do his works; no, Satan carefully blinds their eyes to this fact; and while he disputes for them as his, because of their acts, he charges his agents to quiet their minds from fear of evil, and for this he uses the influence of the world around, and the lusts of the flesh, to benumb and stupify the minds of those whom he aims to destroy.

But these he holds fast, and has no fears lest they escape his grasp; but the good man he detests because he cannot subvert him.

Satan never truly repented; consequently, he is experimentally ignorant of this exercise of the mind. A good man is an enigma and an abomination in his sight; for while he reads the heart of the wicked, he cannot do so with the righteous, unless they, by yielding to Satan's devices, give him an advantage, and thus give place to the Devil.

The Christian who once yields to the enemy in a single point, is at once beset by a host of evil spirits encouraged by his slackness to make a desperate attempt for his soul; while he who steadfastly keeps himself, body and soul in subjection, at once defeats those fiends who, like wolves, lean with hunger, and, fired by a taste of blood, pursue the careless and the straying.

Jos. Clarke.