p. 75 | The Retired Christian

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 17, 1881

The Retired Christian

The terms, “retired merchant,” “banker,” or “farmer,” have about them something that is pleasant to contemplate. We say, the people have worked hard, they have been frugal, and now, in their old age, they can retire from active life, and enjoy what they have labored for. But it is not so with all classes of retired people. The “retired Christian” is not generally a pleasant subject to contemplate. To see a man in health, and who has been a beneficiary of the gospel for years, away from the Sabbath-school, absent from the prayer-meeting, with but little interest in the preaching, doing but little, if anything, for the support of the gospel, spending his money for everything else, but never a cent for religious reading for his family,—in a word, a man retired from Christian life and labor, is a sad and sorry sight. We would not like to preach the funeral sermon of such a man.—Exchange.