Silk-Worm Christians by H. W. Beecher

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 2, 1869

Silk-Worm Christians.

By H. W. Beecher

WHAT is the nature of that religion which satisfies itself with empty compliances of the sanctuary? Do I not see many men who honor the Sabbath, but care nothing for those people for whom the Sabbath was made? Many men honor the sanctuary, they really love prayer, they really glow under the hymn, they delight in taking official part in the services and duties of religion; nevertheless, so soon as they have performed their own duty to God what becomes of their life? How many there are that began life as the worm begins it, and fed voraciously until they were full, and then silently sloughed their worm-skin, and spun around about them a silken house! They retired from life. And you shall find a great many such Christian worms, that have had the benefit of the whole summer, and have retired to some out-of-the-way place, where, suspended, as it were, from the limbs of trees, in these silk-wound cocoons, the chrysalis waits for the next summer. The chrysalis is not a fool. There is a next summer for him. But if a man attempts to do the same thing; if he feeds upon all God's bounties, and only succeeds in spinning out of his own bowels for himself a silken dwelling, and then wraps himself up in that,—there is no next summer to him. He will never come to be a butterfly, though the chrysalis will, and will rise up in judgment against him. He will be damned! For that which is very well for a bug, is very poor for a Christian.—H. W. Beecher.