Off and On Christians by Bene-Berak

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 29, 1882

Off and On Christians.

By Bene-Berak

WE hear some queer experiences in our prayer-meetings. I shall allude to only one now, and simply to a single expression. One of the brethren commenced his experience with the remark: "I’ve been a Christian, off and on, for nigh thirty years." We hardly think he meant just what he said, but he told the truth for a good many professors of religion. His expression was the exemplified creed of a representative class. There are too many off and on Christians in all our churches. They are not peculiar to California or to our day. As far back as the days of Christ, they existed. They belong to the hot and cold sect. Special means of grace always bring them to the front. They think active religious work for a few weeks fully atones for years of subsequent masterly inactivity. They carry this spasmodic character into all the departments of their church life. They are the most barren disciples who attempt to follow the Saviour. They are the poorest co-workers that the pastor has, and everyone who knows anything about church work, knows how much that means; and after a second and sober thought, we do not propose to take it back or to modify it in any form. What God wants, what the church wants, and what every pastor wants, are reliable, every-day Christians. Comet disciples do no good, but much harm. Their eccentricities bring them and their profession into disrepute. Religion is not an effervescence, it is a reality. Those who profess it should exemplify it by a consistent walk and conversation. A genius may dazzle by his brilliancy, but the crop is not large and is thoroughly unreliable. The steady plodders in church life, like the steady plodders in every other kind of life, are the people who do the most for Christ and his kingdom. They are the salt of the earth.—Bene-Berak, in Herald of Truth.